CHURCH, COMMUNITY 
AND STATE 
IN RELATION TO 
EDUCATION 




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CHURCH, COMMUNITY AND STATE 
IN RELATION TO EDUCATION 


VOLUME VI 
The Official 
Oxford Conference 
Books 


THE OFFICIAL OXFORD CONFERENCE BOOKS 


1. THE CHURCH AND ITS FUNCTION IN SOCIETY 

by Dr. W. A. Visser ’t Hooft and Dr. J. H. Oldham 

2. THE CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING OF MAN 

by Prof. T. E. Jessop, Prof. R. L. Calhoun, Prof. N. N. Alexeiev, Prof. 
Emil Brunner, Pastor Pierre Maury, the Rev. Austin Farrer, Prof. W. M. 
Horton 

3. THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND HISTORY 

by Prof. C. H. Dodd, Dr. Edwyn Bevan, Dr. Christopher Dawson, Prof. 
Eugene Lyman, Prof. Paul Tillich, Prof. H. Wendland, Prof. H. G. 
Wood 

4. CHRISTIAN FAITH AND THE COMMON LIFE 

by Nils Ehrenstrom, Prof. M. Dibelius, Prof. John Bennett, The Arch¬ 
bishop of York, Prof. Reinhold Niebuhr, Prof. H. H. Farmer, Dr. 
W. Wiesner 

5. CHURCH AND COMMUNITY 

by Prof. E. E. Aubrey, Prof. E. Barker, Dr. Bjorkquist, Dr. H. Lilje, 
Prof. S. Zankov, Dr. Paul Douglass, Prof. K. S. Latourette, M. Boegner 

6. CHURCH, COMMUNITY, AND STATE IN RELA¬ 
TION TO EDUCATION 

by Prof. F. Clarke, Dr. Paul Monroe, Prof. W. Zenkovsky, C. R. Morris, 
J. W. D. Smith, “ X,” Prof. Ph. Kohnstamm, J. H. Oldham 

7. THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH AND THE WORLD OF 
NATIONS 

by the Marquess of Lothian, Sir Alfred Zimmern, Dr. O. von der 
Gablentz, John Foster Dulles, Prof. Max Huber, Pastor W. Menn, the 
Rev. V. A. Demant, Prof. Otto Piper, Canon C. E. Raven 

THE OXFORD CONFERENCE: Official Report 
Including the full text of the reports issued by the five sections of the 
Conference, Oxford, England, 1937. With an introduction by J. H. 
Oldham 

WORLD CHAOS OR WORLD CHRISTIANITY 

A popular interpretation of Oxford and Edinburgh, 1937 
by Henry Smith Leiper 


CHURCH, 

COMMUNITY AND STATE 

IN RELATION TO 

EDUCATION 


by 

FRED CLARKE 
W. ZENKOVSKY 
PAUL MONROE 
CHARLES R. MORRIS 
J. W. D. SMITH 
Ph. KOHNSTAMM 
“X” 

J. H. OLDHAM 


Willett, Clark <2? Company 

NEW YORK 

1938 

c-opy 2' 


CHICAGO 



Copyright 1938 by 
WILLETT, CLARK & COMPANY 


Manufactured in The U. S. A. by The Plimpton Press 
Norwood, Mass.*La Porte, Ind. 


SE P -3 1938 

©cifl 1 23026 

llV 



‘/'V 


CONTENTS 


General Introduction vii 

PART i 

The Crisis in Education 3 

By Fred Clarke 

The Totalitarian Idea and the Problem of Educa¬ 
tion 29 

By W. Zenkovsky 

Relationship of Community, State, Government, 
Church, and School in the United States 65 

By Paul Monroe 

The State and Voluntary Effort 87 

By C. R. Morris 

PART II 

The Crisis in Christian Education 121 

By J. W. D. Smith 

Christian Education in the World of the Present 
Day: Its Nature and Its Mission 137 

By Ph. Kohnstamm 

The Educational Task of the Church at the Present 
Time 175 

By “ X ” 

Some Concluding Reflections 213 

By J. H. Oldham 


cr 

o 


V 
































* 












f 






GENERAL INTRODUCTION 


Few will question the significance of the issues which en¬ 
gaged the attention of the conference on Church, Commu¬ 
nity, and State held at Oxford in July, 1937. More impor¬ 
tant than the conference itself is the continuing process, in 
which the conference was not more than an incident, of an 
attempt on the part of the Christian churches collectively 
— without, up to the present, the official participation of 
the Church of Rome, but not without the unofficial help 
of some of its thinkers and scholars 1 — to understand the 
true nature of the vital conflict between the Christian faith 
and the secular and pagan tendencies of our time, and to 
see more clearly the responsibilities of the church in rela¬ 
tion to the struggle. What is at stake is the future of Chris¬ 
tianity. The Christian foundations of western civilization 
have in some places been swept away and are everywhere 
being undermined. The struggle today concerns those 
common assumptions regarding the meaning of life with¬ 
out which, in some form, no society can cohere. These 
vast issues are focussed in the relation of the church to the 
state and to the community, because the non-Christian 
forces of today are tending more and more to find embodi¬ 
ment in an all-powerful state, committed to a particular 
philosophy of life and seeking to organize the whole of life 
in accordance with a particular doctrine of the end of 
man’s existence, and in an all-embracing community life 

1 A volume of papers by Roman Catholic writers dealing with subjects 
closely akin to the Oxford Conference and stimulated in part by the pre¬ 
paratory work for Oxford will be published shortly under the title Die 
Kirche Christi: ihre heilende, gestaltende und ordnende Kraft fiir den 
Menschen und seine Welt. 

vii 


General Introduction 


viii 

which claims to be at once the source and the goal of all 
human activities: a state, that is to say, which aims at being 
also a church. 

To aid in the understanding of these issues the attempt 
was made in preparation for the conference at Oxford to 
enlist as many as possible of the ablest minds in different 
countries in a common effort to think out some of the 
major questions connected with the theme of the confer¬ 
ence. During the three years preceding the conference 
studies were undertaken wider in their range and more 
thorough in their methods than any previous effort of a 
similar kind on the part of the Christian churches. This 
was made possible by the fact that the Universal Christian 
Council for Life and Work, under whose auspices the con¬ 
ference was held, possessed a department of research at 
Geneva with two full-time directors and was also able, in 
view of the conference, to establish an office in London 
with two full-time workers and to set up an effective agency 
for the work of research in America. There was thus pro¬ 
vided the means of circulating in mimeographed form (in 
many instances in three languages) a large number of 
papers for comment, of carrying on an extensive and con¬ 
tinuous correspondence, and of maintaining close personal 
touch with many leading thinkers and scholars in different 
countries. 

Intensive study over a period of three years was devoted 
to nine main subjects. The results of this study are em¬ 
bodied in the six volumes to which this general introduc¬ 
tion relates and in two others. The plan and contents of 
each, and most of the papers, were discussed in at least two 
or three small international conferences or groups. The 
contributions were circulated in first draft to a number of 
critics in different countries and comments were received 
often from as many as thirty or forty persons. Nearly all 


General Introduction 


ix 


the papers were revised, and in some instances entirely 
rewritten, in the light of these criticisms. 

Both the range of the contributions and the fact that the 
papers have taken their present shape as the result of a wide 
international interchange of ideas give these books an ecu¬ 
menical character which marks a new approach to the sub¬ 
jects with which they deal. They thus provide an oppor¬ 
tunity such as has hardly existed before for the study in an 
ecumenical context of some of the grave and pressing prob¬ 
lems which today concern the Christian church through¬ 
out the world. 

The nine subjects to which preparatory study was de¬ 
voted were the following: 

1. The Christian Understanding of Man. 

2. The Kingdom of God and History. 

3. Christian Faith and the Common Life. 

4. The Church and Its Function in Society. 

5. Church and Community. 

6. Church and State. 

7. Church, Community and State in Relation to the Eco¬ 

nomic Order. 

8. Church, Community and State in Relation to Educa¬ 

tion. 

9. The Universal Church and the World of Nations. 

The last six of these subjects were considered at the Ox¬ 
ford Conference, and the reports prepared by the sections 
into which the conference was divided will be found in 
the official report of the conference entitled The Oxford 
Conference, Official Report. (Willett, Clark & Company). 

A volume on The Church and its Function in Society, 
by Dr. W. A. Visser*t Hooft and Dr. J. H. Oldham (Wil¬ 
lett, Clark & Company), was published prior to the con¬ 
ference. 

Three of the volumes in the present series of six have to 


X 


General Introduction 


do with the first three subjects in the list already given. 
These are fundamental issues which underlie the study of 
all the other subjects. The titles of these volumes are: 

The Christian Understanding of Man. 

The Kingdom of God and History. 

The Christian Faith and the Common Life. 

The remaining three volumes in the series are a contribu¬ 
tion to the study of three of the main subjects considered 
by the Oxford Conference. These are: 

Church and Community. 

Church, Community and State in Relation to Education. 

The Universal Church and the World of Nations. 

The subject of church and state is treated in a book by 
Mr. Nils Ehrenstrom, one of the directors of the research 
department. This has been written in the light of discus¬ 
sions in several international conferences and groups and 
of a wide survey of the relevant literature, and has been 
published under the title Christian Faith and the Modern 
State (Willett, Clark & Company). 

The planning and shaping of the volume is to a large 
extent the work of the directors of the research depart¬ 
ment, Dr. Hans Schonfeld and Mr. Nils Ehrenstrom. The 
editorial work and the preparation of the volumes for the 
press owes everything to the continuous labor of Miss Olive 
Wyon, who has also undertaken or revised the numerous 
translations, and in the final stages to the Rev. Edward S. 
Shillito, who during the last weeks accepted the responsi¬ 
bility of seeing the books through the press. Valuable 
help and advice was also given throughout the undertak¬ 
ing by Professor H. P. Van Dusen and Professor John 
Bennett of America. 

J. H. OLDHAM 

CHAIRMAN OF THE INTERNATIONAL 
RESEARCH COMMISSION 


LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS 


Clarke, Fred, m.a. 

Professor of Education in the University of London and Director of 
the University of London Institute of Education. Formerly Professor 
of Education at the University of Capetown and at McGill University, 
Montreal. 

Publications: Essays in the Politics of Education; Foundations of His¬ 
tory Teaching; A Study of the English Philosophy of Education in 
1929 Year Book of International Institute of Teachers College, New 
York. 

Zenkovsky, W. 

Professor of Philosophy, Psychology, and Pedagogy at the Russian 
Theological Institute, Paris. Formerly Professor of Philosophy in the 
University of Kiev, Professor of Psychology in the University of Bel¬ 
grade, Professor of Psychology in the University of Prague. 
Publications: The Problem of Psychical Causality (1915) ; Psychology 
of Childhood (1922); The Question of Education in the Light of 
Christian Anthropology (1934); Various articles in foreign and Rus¬ 
sian reviews. 

Monroe, Paul, b.s., ph.d., ll.d., litt.d. 

Barnard Professor of Education, Columbia University, New York. 
Director of International Institute of Teachers College. Formerly 
Director of School of Education, Teachers College, Columbia. 
Publications: Source Book in the History of Education for Greek and 
Roman Period; Thomas Platter and the Educational Renaissance of 
the Sixteenth Century; Test Book in History of Education; Principles 
of Secondary Education; China —a Nation in Evolution. 

Morris, Charles Richard, m.a. 

Fellow, Tutor, and Jowett Lecturer in Philosophy, Balliol College, 
Oxford. 

Publications: Locke, Berkeley, Hume; Idealistic Logic; with J. S. 
Fulton: In Defence of Democracy. 

Smith, James Walter Dickson, m.a. 

Formerly Assistant Lecturer in Education, Glasgow University; Gen¬ 
eral Secretary, Scottish Sunday School Union for Christian Education 
and General Secretary, United Council for Missionary Education. 
Publications: Psychology and Religion in Early Childhood. 

xi 


xii List of Contributors 

Kohnstamm, Ph., d.sc. 

Professor of Education in Amsterdam and Utrecht and Director of 
the Institute of Education at the University of Amsterdam. Formerly 
Professor of Thermodynamics and Lecturer in Philosophy in the Uni¬ 
versity of Amsterdam. 

Publications: Schepper en Schepping. 

Oldham, Joseph Houldsworth, m.a., d.d. 

Secretary of the International Missionary Council and Chairman of 
the International Commission on Research of the Universal Christian 
Council for Life and Work. Formerly Secretary of the Continuation 
Committee of the World Missionary Conference. 

Publications: The Teaching of Jesus; Christianity and the Race Prob¬ 
lem; White and Black in Africa; The Remaking of Man in Africa; 
with Dr. Visser’t Hooft: The Church and its Function in Society. 

Translators 

Professor Kohnstamm’s paper was translated by the Rev. E. L. Allen, 
and the paper by “ X ” was translated by Miss L. Goodfellow. 


PART I 

THE CRISIS IN EDUCATION 

by 

Fred Clarke 











THE CRISIS IN EDUCATION 


A theory of education, whatever degree of universal valid¬ 
ity it may claim, will, of necessity, be very largely deter¬ 
mined in the form it assumes by the norms and values 
which are dominant in the society from which it takes its 
rise. This is true even of theories which have the character 
of a protest against certain current norms and values, and 
so give sharp expression to that conflict of criteria which 
is always present in a living and growing society. Rous¬ 
seau is a voice from eighteenth century France just as Plato 
is a voice from the Athens of the fourth century b.c. To 
say this is not to deny, or even to detract from, the univer¬ 
sal validity of the doctrines that these writers enunciate. 
It is rather to suggest that the full significance of what they 
have to say can be grasped only when the conditions of its 
historical setting are understood and allowance is made for 
them. 

A similar regard for historical determination is neces¬ 
sary in the field of educational practice also. The relation 
between educational effort and social change is misunder¬ 
stood wherever it is assumed, in somewhat naive fashion, 
that social change is, as it were, the result of a deliberately 
planned educational campaign. In recent years organized 
efforts of propaganda, whether in the interests of adver¬ 
tisement or of political parties, have given some color to 
this idea and have tended, in some quarters, to infect 
rather seriously the notion of education itself. But the 
truth is that practice, in the organized deliberate sense, 
arises out of and follows social change rather than pre- 


4 Church, Community, State and Education 

cedes it. In a much more profound and subtle sense social 
change is contributed to by education. But not by a species 
of aggressive propaganda, working against the grain as it 
were, and calling itself education. 

These considerations will be discussed more fully later. 
They are mentioned here only to call attention to the as¬ 
pect of relativity which is present in all educational thought 
and practice. It is particularly necessary to stress this 
aspect in an age when conflict of norms and values has once 
more become acute. Issues are apt to be falsely stated and 
confusion is introduced into the debate if each contributor 
does not make himself fully aware of the influences which 
have shaped his own outlook. The writer therefore feels 
it necessary in the interests of clarity to indicate briefly the 
influences which, so far as he is aware, have played their 
part in his case. 

The effort to achieve such self-awareness is, for him, 
mainly one of estimating the part played by English prac¬ 
tice and English tradition in determining his thought 
about education. It is from that source, no doubt, that he 
derives the conception of freely creative personality as both 
defining the goal towards which all true education strives 
and as indicating the nature of the media in and through 
which it works. 

A concept so comprehensive, and, in a sense, so uncom¬ 
promising, must take a central place in this discussion, so, 
for the moment, we reserve further discussion of it. Here 
it will be enough to indicate some more particular atti¬ 
tudes and presuppositions present in the writer’s thought 
and traceable, he believes, to English experience. 1 

First may be noted the presupposition of a sufficient de- 

1 This is not to deny that other forms of social and cultural experience 
might also have produced them. The writer is concerned only with their 
origin for his own thought. 


Fred Clarke 


5 

gree of unity in the common life and continuing traditions 
of a people to permit of the free action of groups and inter¬ 
ests within the community in originating and carrying on 
educational effort. English education is distinctively na¬ 
tional, not in spite of, but because of the fact that the actual 
provision and administration of means of education is the 
concern of a great number of bodies and associations: local 
public bodies, private and semi-private associations, and 
trusts and foundations in bewildering variety. 

The central ministry does not administer the schools 
and, up to the present, has had no occasion to concert 
measures of education in order to preserve a threatened 
national unity. Thus the basis of common agreement is 
of such long standing and of such strength that what may 
be called the “ defensive ” motive is not prominent in Eng¬ 
lish education. So the school is “ outside politics ” in the 
sense that there is no overt battle of contending parties for 
the control of it and no set design in government policy 
to use it as a defensive instrument. Whether this order of 
things is likely to continue is a question that need not be 
raised here. The “ defensive ” motive is certainly not ab¬ 
sent and would assert itself if a real threat to national unity 
arose. We are concerned here only to note that no such 
threat has arisen so far. 

The writer may be permitted to add that he has had 
some experience of the operation of what is here called 
the “ defensive ” motive in South Africa and in Canada, 
where there are strong non-British groups which have 
striven for and secured constitutional guarantees for the 
maintenance of the necessary conditions of cultural de¬ 
fense by education. The effect on the structure of the 
school system and on the spirit in which it is worked is most 
marked in both instances. 

As we should expect in such conditions as prevail in 


6 Church, Community, State and Education 

England, the school itself has the character of a largely 
autonomous community. In the first place it produces its 
distinctive educative effects through its functioning as a 
community. In this respect the newer state secondary 
schools are following the tradition set by the older “ pub¬ 
lic schools ” and are freely encouraged to do so. The 
school is a small self-contained state in its maintenance of 
equal law, and at the same time a real society in its efforts 
to diversify and enrich a common life with a great variety 
of forms of educative stimulus and opportunity both 
within the classroom and without. 

In the second place it becomes increasingly autonomous, 
even at the elementary level, in order that it may acquire 
and use to the full this community character. It can be 
autonomous with safety, partly because of the depth and 
strength of that basis of national unity to which reference 
has been made, and partly because a supply of teachers is 
forthcoming to whose hands the exercise of such autonomy 
can safely be entrusted. Changing needs and conditions 
tend to increase the active participation of the state, but 
nothing is more strongly marked in English educational 
policy than the insistence by the state upon its role as a 
partner in the common undertaking rather than as a su¬ 
preme director, still less as a universal provider. 

In such a society, working largely on unspoken under¬ 
standings transmitted from generation to generation like 
the soil itself, and needing to take little explicit note of the 
workings of the order by which it lives, it is natural that 
the ideal of free creative personality should establish itself 
as the form in which the educational goal is conceived. 
Really the educational order produces a distinctive type, 
adapted to life in the given society just as any other edu¬ 
cational order — even the most authoritarian — will do. 
But the bonds sit so lightly and are so little felt, the tradi- 


Fred Clarke 


7 

tional social order and the educational order are so much 
the same thing, that the actual experience is one of free¬ 
dom. Nor is this all illusion. Rather one may hazard the 
suggestion that in the relatively undesigned working out 
of the English system in peculiarly fortunate circumstances, 
the essential conditions of substantial freedom have been 
stumbled upon, as it were. There are the necessary con¬ 
straint and conditioning for the shaping of a type, and at 
the same time these operate so unobtrusively and con¬ 
genially as to safeguard the inner life of the pupil, leaving 
him to see himself as the artificer of his own personality. 

From a standpoint thus determined the very real and 
acute crisis in which Western education is now involved 
wears the appearance of a sharp challenge both to the pre¬ 
suppositions upon which such an order as that of England 
has worked, and to that belief in free personality as the goal 
of education which has emerged from the working. To say 
this, however, is to do no more than indicate the form that 
the crisis takes in regard to policy and practical objectives. 
The deeper causes are, no doubt, to be sought in profound 
changes of attitude towards life and towards values re¬ 
garded as integral to well-being, which have already had a 
long history. It is the purpose of other papers to throw 
light upon these deeper changes, especially as they bear 
upon the Christian standpoint and the particular form of 
the concrete obligations which are imposed upon the Chris¬ 
tian by the resulting situation. For the purposes of this 
paper it is proposed to view the actual crisis in education 
as taking the form indicated above, that of a challenge to 
the whole idea of free personality as an objective, and of 
a passionate repudiation of those social and educational 
forms which have such an objective in view. 

Citizens of free societies, such as England, if they are 
properly aware of the conditioning factors of their own free- 


8 Church, Community, State and Education 

dom, will need to take some care in defining the difference 
between themselves and the totalitarians in this regard. 
That the difference is wide and profound is obvious 
enough. But can it be fairly defined as one between free¬ 
dom and discipline taken quite simply? Would the to¬ 
talitarian agree that he has surrendered the ideal of free 
personality? Might he not rather argue that he has discov¬ 
ered and given effect to the necessary conditions of it? 
Conversely, could the English advocate of freedom, for 
instance, deny that the freedom he seeks in life and educa¬ 
tion is conditioned by a very real social discipline? The 
“ free ” citizen could not deny that the authority of a deter¬ 
minate social and cultural order is essential to any effective 
education. If he did attempt to deny it his own practice 
would belie him. 

The issue between freedom and discipline stated ab¬ 
stractly is in fact unreal. It would be nearer the truth to 
say that the difference lies between two conceptions of 
authority as residing in a given social and political order. 
The totalitarian would seem to be prepared to take such 
authority as absolute whatever may be the philosophy or 
the mystical creed by which he attempts to justify such 
acceptance. 

To the “ free ” citizen such a proceeding seems to strike 
at the heart of the very idea of humanity while to the 
Christian it is the flat negation of all that is most vital in 
his belief. Neither would deny the reality of social au¬ 
thority in education. What he would most strenuously 
deny is the claim to absoluteness. Social authority is to 
both of them in the last resort contingent. It may not 
claim the last obedience. Its purpose, it would be argued, 
is to educate men to the point where they can catch their 
own vision of that to which the last obedience is due. Hu¬ 
manist and Christian might differ as to the seat of ultimate 


Fred Clarke 


9 

authority, but neither would find it in a form of society or 
in that organization of society for common action which 
we call the state. 

For a clear and authoritative statement of the ideal 
around which the crisis has arisen we may turn to the most 
distinguished of modern English writers on the philosophy 
of education. Sir Percy Nunn in his Education: Its Data 
and First Principles, puts it thus (p. 5) : 

We shall stand throughout on the position that nothing good 
enters into the human world except in and through the free 
activities of individual men and women, and that educational 
practice must be shaped to accord with that truth. 

And again (p. 10) : 

Freedom is, in truth, the condition if not the source of all the 
higher goods. Apart from it duty has no meaning, self-sacrifice 
no value, authority no sanction. 

Such words can still evoke a passionate response from 
teachers, and not in England alone, and they state the 
issue fairly, not denying the value and necessity of duty, 
self-sacrifice, and authority, but claiming that, without 
freedom, these things have neither meaning nor validity. 

What then has happened to precipitate this crisis in West¬ 
ern education? From the standpoint here taken it may 
be suggested that as a result, no doubt, of causes that have 
long been operating, there has taken place since the Great 
War a widespread breakdown of that settled social and cul¬ 
tural order under which it was possible to carry on the sure 
and ordered educational process of producing the cultural 
type in such a way as to guarantee free and expansive con¬ 
ditions and to afford a wide range of free variation and 
creative adventure within the whole. It is suggested, that 
is, that totalitarian philosophy is a normal ex post facto 
phenomenon, a sort of “ rationalizing ” if not of social ca- 


io Church, Community, State and Education 

lamity, then of the readiest means to emerge from the 
consequences. The essential fact is the social and cultural 
breakdown itself, rather than the philosophy which 
emerged from the efforts to repair it. This emergency 
character of totalitarian doctrine needs always to be kept in 
view. 

Where the pre-war conditions of continuity, security, 
and acceptance still exist in sufficient strength it remains 
possible: 

1. To continue to proclaim the doctrine of free per¬ 
sonality as the goal of education and to produce a type 
which, while being genuinely a type, is free to develop 
further possibilities and so to become increasingly univer¬ 
sal — more representatively human. For the type is not 
regarded as wholly fixed or defined beforehand. Nor is 
the nation taken as absolute. Rather is it the conservator 
and vehicle of values which, though they assume a distinc¬ 
tive form in that national type, are nevertheless, in princi¬ 
ple, universal and so communicable. 

2. To contemplate and maintain what Bergson would 
call an “ open ” society, that is, a society which is expecting 
and welcoming further development of the “ type ” and 
ready to assimilate to itself the enrichments which the crea¬ 
tive life of free personalities can bring. If, as Nunn argues, 
nothing good enters the human world in any other way, 
society is dooming itself to stagnation if it binds strictures 
around this one source of growth. 

One may recall here the dictum of Professor W. E. Hock¬ 
ing that “ Education must communicate the type and must 
provide for growth beyond the type.” If the words 
“ growth beyond the type ” should seem a little perplex¬ 
ing, and a little out of step with the present argument, per¬ 
haps we might substitute “ further growth of the type 
towards the universal.” 


Fred Clarke 


11 


The national communities in the world in which it is 
still possible to maintain these attitudes in practice are 
now much reduced in number, and may be reduced still 
further, for we have witnessed since the war the rise of 
powerful state organizations concentrating under their 
own control all possible instruments of educational in¬ 
fluence and propaganda. It has been left to our age to 
make the discovery of the enormous power that modern 
invention may place in the hands of a resolute and ruthless 
central government. A revolution has taken place in our 
time comparable to that which was brought about by the 
invention of gunpowder, but on a vaster scale and with 
much more subtle consequences. What the earlier revolu¬ 
tion did for feudalism, the later one may do for democracy, 
unless the urgency of the situation is grasped so as to make 
possible that reorientation which is demanded. 

The command of influence thus concentrated in a few 
directing hands is used to produce a sharply defined type, 
obedient and acquiescent yet capable of intense energy 
and enthusiasm within the set limits. Readiness to ac¬ 
cept the idealized nation group as an absolute (or even a 
deity) is usually a central characteristic of the type. The 
limits of permissible variation are narrowly drawn and 
variation beyond them is disloyalty and punishable as 
such. 

Personality being thus equated with the sharply defined 
type within a fixed social pattern which claims something 
of the sanctity of a divine revelation, there is little room 
either for the free explorative play of personality beyond 
the type, or for that cumulative growth and adaptation of 
the social whole at its “ open ” end which such free play 
of personality might bring about. For, it would appear, 
there is to be no open end. Neither is there any margin of 
adventure or penumbra beyond the individual type, or 


12 Church, Community, State and Education 

beyond the existing social order in which fresh possibilities 
of enrichment may be sought. All is clear-cut and pat¬ 
terned, decisive and inclusive. Adventure and creation 
must take place wholly within it. 

Yet it would be flying in the face of clear facts to assert 
roundly that the thrust and elan of creative personality 
have disappeared altogether from such societies. For the 
time at least there is too much evidence to the contrary. 
It is on the basis of such evidence that the totalitarian 
might argue that, so far from having crushed out creative 
personality, he has in fact set up the positive conditions 
for its release and fulfilment. It would be necessary then 
to join issue with him on the question of method , whether 
by his method of propaganda and dictation he really does 
produce the result and can go on producing it. For only 
the lapse of time can provide the final answer. It has yet 
to be shown that the totalitarian system of things will 
wear when conditions are less excited and feverish than 
they are today. 

But in order to show that there may, for a time at least, 
be a real sense of expansion and release, a conviction of 
passing into “ freedom,” arising from the acceptance of 
rigorous discipline in a common enterprise, it is not neces¬ 
sary to turn to the totalitarian countries. The point may 
be illustrated from the declarations of young Englishmen 
either in welcoming such an occasion of release, or in ex¬ 
pressing a wistful desire for the conditions that would 
bring it. 

The first example is a sonnet by Rupert Brooke, written 
shortly after the outbreak of the Great War: 

Now God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour 
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping, 

With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power, 

To turn, as swimmers, into cleanness leaping. 

Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary. 


Fred Clarke 


*3 


Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move. 

And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary 
And all the little emptiness of love! 

Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there. 
Where there’s no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending, 

Nought broken save this body, lost but breath; 

Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there. 

But only agony, and that has ending; 

And the worst friend and enemy is but Death. 

Brooke himself died, a soldier, not long afterwards. 
Does the sonnet lack the ring of truth, of a glad acceptance 
of what to him was release and freedom? And if this is the 
temper and the mood upon which the totalitarian educa¬ 
tor plays and this the result he produces, can it be argued 
that he fails to evoke creative personality? We may well 
ask, indeed, whether such release may be achieved only at 
the price of war or threat of war. But that throws upon us 
the onus of devising a plan of education which will achieve 
it under conditions of settled peace. And that, in fact, is 
one aspect of the task with which democratic societies are 
now faced. 

Let us now take another example of generous youth, in 
this case not finding his release, but bitterly uneasy with 
the longing for it. In Lord Lytton’s deeply suggestive 
memoir of his son Antony, killed in a flying accident, there 
is a letter in which Antony says: 

Give them [i.e. the war generation] their due — they were 
good. But any fool can fight a war: he has to. There is no 
alternative. It is simple. It is straightforward, and when you 
are dead you are great. But to live at peace, is difficult, tedious, 
heartbreaking, complicated, twisty, and uncertain. And when 
you are dead you are little. 

In spite of the difference of circumstance the resemblance 
to Brooke’s sentiment of twenty years earlier is striking 
enough. 


14 Church, Community, State and Education 

In another letter further light is thrown on the temper 
which beyond all question finds reason to chafe at condi¬ 
tions that refuse to afford opportunity for the desired free¬ 
dom and release. He says: 

The pacifists have set about me the wrong way. That’s all. 
I admire strength and vitality and clarity of thought, action 
and expression. And I admire death. I like black and I like 
white. But not grey. 

We do not wish to suggest that such a temper is wholly 
admirable or that it may not arise from some misdirection 
in education, but it is present, particularly in high-spirited 
and generous youth, and may be accentuated by economic 
stress and the timidities of the crowd. And it is the totali¬ 
tarian who seems most successful in drawing upon it today. 
However that may be, the widespread existence of such 
a temper among youth is a factor of no small importance 
in constituting the crisis with which education now finds 
itself faced. 

When we ask, as we must, what are the forces which 
have brought about such a general rejection of the social 
and cultural conditions under which the ideal of free per¬ 
sonality, as here understood, can have full play, it must be 
replied that one of them is certainly insecurity. We mean 
here not only insecurity in the military sense, or even eco¬ 
nomic insecurity, itself a powerful factor. We mean also 
moral and emotional insecurity against aimlessness and 
despair. The examples quoted show that this may be 
acutely felt among peoples not living under conditions of 
severe stress. The phenomenon may perhaps be traced to 
the operation of disintegrating influences which have been 
at work upon the European spirit from at least the time of 
the Renaissance. A regenerated education will have to 
take account of them, but space does not permit of a dis- 


Fred Clarke 


15 

cussion here. If, however, one adds to these deep-seated 
general influences, in the case of a particular people, na¬ 
tional catastrophe, economic stress, a loosening of the roots 
of community and widespread and feverish recourse to 
heady theories, one can easily understand that disintegra¬ 
tion may proceed so far as to call for violent measures of 
rehabilitation by sheer pressure. And we know now how 
readily violence can find means of sanctifying itself and of 
propagating the doctrine that appears to justify it. 

But there is also another factor contributing to the situa¬ 
tion. It is a relatively new factor and the totalitarian has 
learned how to take account of it and use it. We may call 
it Mass Assertion. We mean by the term the active im¬ 
pulse of men in the mass to refuse any fatalistic submis¬ 
sion to circumstance. The decline of older religious be¬ 
liefs and ways of life leaves the way open to Promethean 
faith in man’s collective power to help himself by drastic 
“ reconstruction.” A century or more of popular educa¬ 
tion and mechanical progress lends both driving power 
and direction to the faith, whether it aims at the refashion¬ 
ing and reinspiration of an old order or the creation and 
maintenance of a new one. Here again the phenomenon 
is not confined to the totalitarian lands. 

The resulting problem for education in the democracies 
is formidable in the extreme. Yet all too little thought has 
been given to it in the form in which it now presents itself. 
It is not easy to reconcile with the observed facts the com¬ 
placent picture so frequently drawn of millions of sober, 
well informed and serious citizens, studiously devoting 
themselves to the task of arriving at sound judgments on 
each of the vastly complicated problems upon which a 
modern government has to make decision. Much current 
democratic theory is far too naively optimistic and over¬ 
simplified to provide an adequate basis for the kind of edu- 


16 Church, Community, State and Education 

cation that a modern democracy needs. In point of fact 
we are more often saved by departing from it than by ad¬ 
hering to it. This is not at all to agree that the democratic 
order is outmoded. To do so would be to abandon the 
philosophy of education which has been placed in the fore¬ 
front of this discussion. It is, however, to suggest that the 
technique of democracy may, in these times, be much 
more complicated than the nineteenth century realized. 
If so, there is a task for democratic education not yet fully 
formulated. 

To the fruits of all such tendencies towards forcible 
collective action the state is legatee. Never was there an 
engine of such power. Fierce battles for the control of it 
are to be expected, as are also the ruthless uses made of 
it by the victors. For increasingly it is identified not only 
with the nation but with the church also, even when the 
church repudiates the name and becomes a quasi-religious 
cult of antireligion. So a situation arises in which states 
may be described as in war-formation on all fronts simul¬ 
taneously: economic, religious, intellectual and educa¬ 
tional, as well as military. 

The description suggests that the condition can hardly 
be permanent, however fruitful of tragedy it may be while 
it lasts. Its effects upon education and upon prevailing 
philosophies of education have already been hinted at. 
They need not be elaborated here. It is of more concern 
that the peoples who still continue the free tradition 
should draw the right conclusion for themselves, and es¬ 
pecially that they should inquire how far the totalitarian 
revolution is the result of universal modern tendencies 
which are present in greater or less degree in all countries. 
Then, without surrendering their central faith, they can 
return to fundamental principles, restating their philos¬ 
ophies and readjusting their practice to meet the inade- 


Fred Clarke 


17 

quacies and weaknesses which the earthquake shocks of 
recent years have revealed. 

To some suggestions towards this end we may now turn. 
The first is to call for a more discerning recognition, in 
some democratic communities at least, of the fact that 
there can be no effective education, no adequate achieve¬ 
ment of personality, apart from the basic discipline of an 
established social and cultural order. There are doctrines 
of education which, legitimately enough perhaps in some 
circumstances, take an established order for granted with¬ 
out elaboration of its bearings. There are others, how¬ 
ever, that do not fairly avow the real anarchism by which 
they appear to be inspired. Either they draw upon a social 
capital, without acknowledgment — a procedure which is 
quite possible where the pupils are advantageously placed 
socially and economically — or, at the worst, they encour¬ 
age disintegration by an unconditioned cult of “ free ” 
personality, which is really a propagation of anarchism. 
It is in secure and prosperous societies where the illusion of 
“ unconditioned ” free personality may most easily arise, 
but even so it is harmful both to the society and the indi¬ 
vidual. 

The pedagogic problem here is that of discipline in 
the sense of training a pupil to recognize himself and his 
own best interests in the requirements of an authority 
which, at first sight, seems to be imposed from without. 
From this point of view discipline has a threefold func¬ 
tion: (1) to organize and direct the essential process of 
taking on a culture by an individual, a process which is 
at the same time a development and enhancement of the 
individual’s own powers; (2) to bring about the “ inter¬ 
nalizing ” of the ruling sanctions and values of the culture 
so that from being external standards and compulsions they 
become consciously accepted and applied as personal cri- 


18 Church, Community, State and Education 

teria; (3) to build up the volitional structure so that 
action may conform to insight. 

These assured, the essentials of personality are present. 
It is not wholly honest to let them come by chance or 
surreptitiously as it were, under the illusion that the cult 
of free personality derives wholly from inner impulse. 
And it is disastrous to educate as though it is immaterial 
whether these essentials are secured at all. 

In the second place education in the free societies may 
have to take more account of the necessities of an organic 
order in society, when the world of experience has become 
so complex and the necessities of the common life demand 
so high a degree of differentiation of function. The inter¬ 
pretation of democratic equality comes into question here. 
It may be that there are societies in which the postulate is 
being interpreted altogether too naively and crudely, and 
where too little account is being taken in the working of 
the educational system of the need for continuous selection 
somewhat in the Platonic manner. As was suggested 
above, far-reaching changes in democratic technique may 
have to take place and the principle of differentiation may 
come to affect political as well as economic functioning. 
It would be wholly undemocratic if such changes involved 
any withdrawal of the franchise or any reduced emphasis 
on the responsibility of every citizen for the common good. 
But there are many ways in which that responsibility may 
be discharged. Our ideas of democracy have probably 
been too exclusively political, and our education has no 
doubt been affected by this. And in general, so far from 
aristocracy being opposed to democracy, the future may 
emphasize the proviso that a democracy which is not 
organized so as to evolve continuously in its working its 
own “ natural ” aristocracy is doomed to futility and pos¬ 
sibly worse. Should this be so there is an obvious task for 
education as well as for political readjustment before us. 


Fred Clarke 


*9 

More immediately urgent perhaps is a group of questions 
concerning the proper functions of the state in education. 
There could hardly be a worse time than the present for 
any attempt to determine what the functions of the state 
should be under conditions of normal security and matur¬ 
ity, for we have seen reason to think that the present at¬ 
titude of men towards the state is abnormal, the result of 
a fevered and unhealthy condition of society. 

Further, it seems probable that differences in degree of 
administrative direction and control of education by the 
state cannot safely be taken as measuring accurately de¬ 
grees of democratic freedom. For profound differences of 
history and circumstance have to be taken into considera¬ 
tion. In democratic England, a high degree of initiative 
and large powers of control are left to purely local, or even 
voluntary, bodies. But in Australia, which is at least 
equally democratic and almost aggressively “ British,’’ 
local bodies, if they exist at all, have little or no initiative, 
and popular education is administered under a highly 
centralized state system which, in form at least, is much 
nearer to that of France than to that of Britain. It would 
seem that the citizens of a democracy may, according to 
circumstance, keep their “ rights ” in respect of control 
of education in their own hands and exercise them, as it 
were, directly, or they may choose to deposit these rights 
with the state as trustee, relying on the use of ordinary 
political controls to guard against abuse. In some quarters 
there is a tendency to equate “ democratic ” with “ de¬ 
centralized ” in classifying forms of educational adminis¬ 
tration by the state. But it is extremely doubtful whether 
such a tendency has any real justification. The true dif¬ 
ferentia of a “ democratic ” education must be sought in 
another direction, in the region of intention and aim. 
Where it is accepted that the real educator is the com¬ 
munity, not the state, and that the interest of the commu- 


20 Church, Community, State and Education 

nity is best served by securing a maximum of opportunity 
to free personality, the essentials of a democratic order 
are present. The legal, administrative, regulative organ 
called the state is then, towards the community, an agent 
and, towards the individual, a trustee. It is, on the other 
hand, when state and community are identified that demo¬ 
cratic values in education can no longer have free course 
and this seems to be the condition now reached in totali¬ 
tarian countries. 

As has been suggested, non-totalitarian communities 
may make very free use of state action in furthering edu¬ 
cation. There is, no doubt, a radical incompatibility be¬ 
tween the real processes and ends of education and some 
forms of state action. But in a freely developing commu¬ 
nity experience is likely to reveal these cases and, con¬ 
versely, to discover which modes of action are, in its special 
circumstances, most consonant with genuine educative ef¬ 
fect. Thus, while we might expect in general that the 
healthier and more developed the community the more 
spontaneous its educating activity will be and the less de¬ 
pendent upon the state, no absolute rule can be laid down 
— the question is, at bottom, one of the prevailing philoso¬ 
phy of life and education rather than of the administrative 
forms in which the philosophy seeks expression. The Aus¬ 
tralian and the Englishman, no doubt, share the same es¬ 
sential philosophy, but how differently they express it in 
their respective educational systems! 

Perhaps we get nearer to the heart of the matter when 
we return to the conception of free personality as the 
governing ideal and ask the question: Can the ideal of 
free personality be consistently held, can it be safely held, 
except as an article of faith which is essentially religious? 
By “ safely ” we mean safely for society and social cohesion. 
For it would seem, without faith in an ideal whole which 


Fred Clarke 


21 


both sustains and transcends the free personalities, either 
anarchy will ensue, or a totalitarian order will slip in as 
it were, to fill the void left by an absent religion. The 
problem which no doctrine of free personality is able to 
avoid is the problem of obligation: Why should such in¬ 
dividualities cohere in a society and how should they be 
brought to cohere? Hobbes could solve the problem only 
by a virtual elimination of the free personalities. Rous¬ 
seau thought he had solved it in his form of the social con¬ 
tract, but never quite escapes from a kind of oscillation 
between the two poles of complete individual freedom and 
the authority of the general will. 

May it not be that the democratic ideal of free person¬ 
ality, like that of the closely allied one of equality, is in 
the last resort undemonstrable, and must be held as an 
article of faith of a universal religion? There is, indeed, 
a ground of unity among men afforded by the common life 
in time and place, the sharing in a history and a present 
common home, which constitute the community and out 
of which the state emerges as formulation and guarantee. 
Nor does it seem practicable to contemplate the attain¬ 
ment of any larger, more comprehending unity except by 
this route, by way of the nation-state. The way to a league 
of mankind lies through a league of nations. 

But experience has shown that freedom of personality 
as here conceived is always insecure, even in the most 
liberal of states, so long as it is grounded upon and guar¬ 
anteed by nothing more abiding and universal than the 
laws of a particular state. There are those who fear for 
its future even in England. Unless, then, men are aware 
of a ground and guarantee of free personality as a supreme 
value, deeper and more universal than those which the 
state can offer, the fear of anarchy and disintegration will 
always be there to limit human possibilities. Out of that 


22 Church, Community, State and Education 

fear may emerge at any time the totalitarian reaction, not 
wholly without justification. And, as we have seen, out 
of the reaction there may emerge, in due course, a religion 
to rationalize and justify it. Violence is sanctified, and 
the time actually does come “ when whosoever killeth you 
shall think he doeth God service.” 

In his Man and the State , published ten years ago, Pro¬ 
fessor Hocking has a prophetic passage which illuminates 
the principles we are here suggesting. He says: 

Men are always more widely conscious of the fact of under¬ 
lying unity than they are of its nature, and in proportion as 
they lose their grasp of metaphysical reality, they incline to re¬ 
cover their loss by making gods of social groups, of “ society ” 
or “ state ” or “ humanity,” to the boundless confusion of po¬ 
litical theory, and to vast practical losses in terms of liberty, as 
will appear in due time. 

If, then, the ultimate guarantee of free personality, with 
all that it means for education, is religious, what will be 
the character of such a religion? Clearly it must be a 
religion of love, as an absolute obligation. It must also be 
a religion which holds out no hope of any earthly achieve¬ 
ment of perfection and yet insists upon the striving to¬ 
wards perfection as another absolute obligation. That is, 
it will recognize “ Sin ” as the consciousness of this ines¬ 
capable tension. And it will recognize no final resting- 
place for men between the City of Swine and the City of 
God. It will eschew hate, it will look for the sources of 
evil and of regeneration within , and will not succumb to 
the prevailing externalism and the trick of “ projecting ” 
our own sense of guilt upon others so that we may have the 
satisfaction of “ fighting evil ” with no disquiet to our own 
consciences. It will also be sceptical of all earthly utopias 
however religious the garb in which they array themselves. 

Such a religion looks surprisingly like a revitalized and 


Fred Clarke 


23 

regenerated Christianity. The suggestion implied here is 
not merely pragmatic in the manner of “ Why not try 
Christianity? ” Still less is it cynical, as though one should 
say: “ If Christianity had not existed it would have been 
necessary to invent it.” Rather is it a suggestion that in 
Christianity there is conveyed, however darkly and figura¬ 
tively, profound knowledge, knowledge of truth about life, 
neglect of which can lead only to the dehumanizing of 
men . 2 

If this is so, the whole problem of what we have been 
accustomed to call “ religious ” education takes on a new 
and tremendous significance. For we are now concerned 
not with a department or phase of education, but with the 
whole meaning of education itself, the achievement of 
freedom by adequate knowledge and recognition of its 
conditions. And this has to be carried through with full 
recognition of all that “ science ” and “ civilization ” now 
mean in the lives of men. 

In this short paper it is not possible to develop fully all 
the implications of such a theme. We must content our¬ 
selves with a few reflections, having in view the necessities 
of the practical situation. 

In the first place it should be clear that the question 

2 A word of explanation seems to be called for here. The writer has 
taken his allotted task to be that of attempting an exposition of the con¬ 
temporary crisis in education in terms as objective as his own personal 
experience and outlook would permit. He was not asked to present a 
characterization of the crisis worked out from a specifically Christian stand¬ 
point taken from the outset. (It was understood that provision for studies 
of this kind would be made elsewhere in the series.) 

Hence, tentative conclusions to the effect that ultimate guarantees of 
freedom among men lie beyond the Law of the State, and are essentially 
religious in character, and that a religion capable of providing such guar¬ 
antees will have the typical features of Christianity, must be taken as aris¬ 
ing from the argument itself. They must not be read as though they pur¬ 
ported to be an adequate and systematic statement of Christian criteria as 
such. 


24 Church, Community, State and Education 

at issue involves much more than the relations between 
church and state. The church must, indeed, be “ free ” 
within the state, but it must also be ready to subordinate 
its interests — or apparent interests — as a de facto associa¬ 
tion, to the supreme end for which it exists. Inhibitions 
such as those of the rich young ruler may well be fatal. In 
the practical work of education, while churches will con¬ 
tinue to conduct their own schools so long as they are per¬ 
mitted to do so, they may find their real task more and 
more in spreading through the community at large that 
profounder consciousness of the grounds of its unity to 
which reference has been made. And this implies not any 
attempt to “ capture ” the state — which long experience 
has shown may be only the beginning of virtual apostasy 
on the side of the church and of tyranny for the mass — 
nor any energetic propaganda. It implies rather the ex¬ 
emplification of the Christian life with full regard to the 
facts of the modern world. Freedom so to live is the one 
demand upon the state which every Christian must make. 
The living of such a life must have its inevitable social 
consequences; but these will follow from the decisions 
and actions of individual Christians striving to realize 
in their citizenship the human obligations which their 
faith imposes. They will not or should not follow from 
the imposition by a church upon its members of the obliga¬ 
tion to follow a particular line of policy as citizens. In¬ 
deed the whole problem of the political action of churches 
as such seems to have changed its nature now that the pre¬ 
suppositions upon which it proceeded no longer hold as 
they did. 

In face of the inescapable facts of the present situation 
it is difficult to offer any suggestions, more precise than 
those given, about the place of religion and the church in 
education in the kind of society which now appears to 


Fred Clarke 


25 

be taking shape. Postulates which were valid enough a 
generation or two ago no longer hold, now that Christian¬ 
ity has been so widely rejected and great communities are 
now using all the vast powers of the state in order to re¬ 
construct European society upon a basis quite other than 
that upon which it has rested for nearly two thousand 
years. We should not underestimate the immensity of the 
crisis which is now upon us, or fail to realize that what is 
at issue is not merely the continuance of this or that 
church, or of any particular plan of providing for religious 
education, but the validity and necessity of the Christian 
philosophy of life itself. Further light upon these prob¬ 
lems of organization and practice must wait upon the deci¬ 
sion of that supreme issue. 

In conclusion we should wish to re-emphasize the diffi¬ 
culty, even the danger, of arriving at precise formulations 
about practice in a world so abnormal, and in many re¬ 
spects so provisional. So much is in flux, and we may take 
leave to doubt whether any of the new crystallizations 
which have so far emerged have much prospect of perma¬ 
nence in their present form. 

It may be enough, therefore, to conclude with some 
suggestions about the kind of order which those bred in 
the “ free ” tradition of life and education would find 
satisfactory. We should hope that in mature and rea¬ 
sonably secure communities, society itself would be the 
active educational agent, freely creating schools and other 
educational means out of its own life and resources in 
terms of its own varied needs and values. It would use 
the state only where process of law was required for 
such ends as the guarantee of opportunity, the provision 
of means, the securing of minorities, the maintenance of 
standards, and the protection of the reasonable freedom of 
the teachers. Not only churches but other groups would 


26 Church, Community, State and Education 

have free course for their educational activities within the 
law. Limits to toleration there would always have to be, 
but the ruling consideration in imposing such limits would 
be the desire to maintain the positive conditions of real 
freedom. Finally, one would hope for a society which has 
met and fairly solved, as no society has yet done, that prob¬ 
lem of the true nature of democratic discipline which is 
now at the heart of our crisis. In times of good fortune, 
of security and prosperity, democracies do not care to hear 
about discipline. So when the crisis comes and a form 
of discipline is demanded which will serve to meet the 
crisis without sacrifice of the essentials of freedom, the 
democracies are unprepared and the advantage shifts to 
the totalitarians. Then new religions are born from the 
desire to conquer fear and the hitherto neglected disci¬ 
pline becomes a kind of god who will not hear of freedom. 
It may be that this is the real problem with which educa¬ 
tion in the democracies is now squarely faced, to devise 
educational forms and procedures from which may emerge 
a discipline whose service is perfect freedom. 

The totalitarian revolution may prove to have per¬ 
formed a real service to the democracies if it burns into 
their consciousnesses that which they have been disposed 
to forget — that there is no true freedom which is not, in 
a very real sense, a kind of obedience. 


THE TOTALITARIAN IDEA AND THE 
PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 

by 

W. Zenkovsky 











t 







































































THE TOTALITARIAN IDEA AND THE 
PROBLEM OF EDUCATION 


Introduction 

The totalitarian tendencies of our day — a phrase which 
denotes a complex of very varied phenomena of the post¬ 
war period — were not evoked by any educational prob¬ 
lems, nor by any crisis in, or criticism of, contemporary 
views on education. These totalitarian tendencies are 
connected with the general crisis in civilization which had 
been coming to a head for a long time, and which became 
particularly acute after the war. They are also connected 
with the present violent and profound disturbances in the 
realm of politics, in the theory and practice of democracy, 
and finally, with a new outburst of national self-conscious¬ 
ness. 

When these totalitarian tendencies first appeared on the 
scene they had no connection with the sphere of education; 
yet, in the course of events, possibly no other sphere of 
life has been more profoundly affected by these tendencies, 
nor has any other sphere been subjected to such persistent 
pressure. Totalitarian tendencies have penetrated into 
education from the outside, but having done so, they have 
deeply stirred and even revolutionized the most vital forces 
within the realm of education, have called into being a 
counter-movement, and in a certain sense have evoked a 
creative response. We might even say, without fear of 
exaggeration, that this particular sphere of life provided 
a specially favorable soil for totalitarian tendencies, for 
education was passing through a serious internal crisis 

29 


30 Church, Community, State and Education 

when it first came into touch with totalitarianism which 
immediately claimed to be able to solve all the difficulties 
which had provoked this crisis. 

Primarily, and chiefly, totalitarianism is an ideological 
phenomenon. This does not by any means weaken its in¬ 
tensity and effectiveness in the political sphere, or the 
reality of its dominion over life — that is, where totalitari¬ 
anism is able to control the situation. Yet its “ creative 
effort ” has been tempered by actual life, and will undergo 
still further changes, whereas the ideological process of 
“ fermentation ” which evoked totalitarianism is penetrat¬ 
ing into life more strongly and more profoundly than 
it seemed to penetrate at first sight. This is especially clear 
to those who look at contemporary life, at the intellectual 
and spiritual changes which are taking place in the modern 
world, “ in the light of Christ.” It may be that this can be 
explained by the peculiar position of Christianity in the 
whole historical process of modern times; in a certain 
sense it is true to say that it remains aloof from history. 
Christianity is profoundly connected with the recent past, 
with all its creative quests, its Utopian idealism, its faith 
in democracy, its passion for liberty and its “ personalistic ” 
sentiment. Yet it neither could nor would identify itself 
with the past epoch in civilization which inwardly re¬ 
pelled Christianity by its secularism, by its self-sufficient 
“ neutrality ” of culture, by the way in which it defaced 
and distorted the Christian message of the Kingdom of God, 
by its substitution of Utopia, which establishes justice by 
force and violence, for the Christian idea of brotherhood. 

In the “ revaluation of values ” which takes place in the 
world today and represents the driving force behind the 
modern crisis in civilization, Christianity not only takes 
a creative part, as an eternal factor in history, but it faces 
the task of rebuilding the whole of life on the basis of the 


W. Zenkovsky 


3i 

Christian idea, and it does so with the consciousness that 
it is in possession of new energy and of new inspiration. 
In the light of this it becomes evident that Christianity is 
the true source and the true basis of the true totalitarian 
conception, which is only revealed in part in the non- 
Christian and even anti-Christian tendencies of this period 
of transition. This juxtaposition of forces which are so 
different and yet are united in the same conception, both 
intensifies the relationships and confuses the whole pic¬ 
ture: the totalitarian tendencies of the non-Christian, and 
especially of the anti-Christian type, are persistently seek¬ 
ing for an independent foundation, whether it be in some 
mythology of “ blood and soil,” or in dialectic materialism, 
or in something else. 

It remains true, however, that Christianity, as such, 
proves to be a powerful factor — even though it in some 
cases be a secret one — in the changes which are taking 
place in the civilization of our own day. In this particular 
instance the whole strength of Christianity lies in the fact 
that it is neither a “ party ” nor a “ tendency,” but an 
eternal force in history; in short, that it is the church. All 
its external divisions cannot eliminate either its basic or its 
historical unity, even if this basic unity be manifested in the 
depths and not on the surface of history. The power of 
Christianity lies in the fact that it aims at truth and good¬ 
ness, and not at external power and success. Christianity, 
therefore, comprehends and makes a mystical synthesis of 
all the truth and goodness produced by the “ stream ” of 
history. 

The attitude of Christianity to the whole subject of edu¬ 
cation, to the crisis toward which events have so long been 
moving, to all the creative experiments in this sphere and 
the sense of a deep inward confusion, has never been aca¬ 
demic; it has always been living and creative. The fact 


32 Church, Community, State and Education 

that all contemporary totalitarian movements make such 
an effort to “ capture the heart of the young ” 1 to rebuild 
the entire system of school and of extra-mural education, 
lays a grave obligation upon the Christian conscience; it 
is the duty of Christianity to come forth at this very mo¬ 
ment in history and to enter the realm of education, bring¬ 
ing into it all its truth and authority. 

It is a Christian duty to throw a clear light upon the 
nature of the totalitarian tendencies of our day, and to 
show plainly that the true basis of a new civilization, the 
true way to create the “ new man,” is to be found in Chris¬ 
tianity alone. All over the world today forces are strug¬ 
gling and competing in the effort to capture the soul of 
youth. Christianity cannot fail to take a very active and 
vital part in this struggle; sine ira et studio to the “ old ” 
humanity whose day is passing, and to the “ new ” human¬ 
ity which is about to be born, it must show all the eternal 
truth and the historical vitality and effectiveness of Chris¬ 
tianity. 

THE TOTALITARIAN IDEA AND TOTALITARIAN TENDENCIES 

In order to see clearly both the meaning and the histori¬ 
cal significance of totalitarian tendencies (as they are mani¬ 
fested in the crisis in education) we must first of all em¬ 
phasize an important distinction which will help us to 
avoid many mistakes which frequently occur in contem¬ 
porary writings. We must make a clear distinction be¬ 
tween the totalitarian “ idea ” and totalitarian “ tenden¬ 
cies,” which manifest themselves differently in different 
countries and are associated with movements which are 
sharply opposed to one another. 

Our present epoch is certainly an epoch of great and 

i G. Giese speaks of the “ revolution of the heart ” (Staat und Erzie- 
hung, p. 7. 1933). 


W. Zenkovsky 


33 

universal change; it witnesses many transitional groupings 
analogous to what chemists call “ unstable compounds.” 
The totalitarian tendencies are not an artificial “ inven¬ 
tion ” nor are they a peculiar feature of the present day, a 
feature which, as it were, has been imposed from without 
and is therefore alien. Its historical significance lies in 
the fact that it actually issues from the very depths of his¬ 
tory, yet as it would seem to an outside observer, it is indis¬ 
solubly blended with the “ telluric forces ” 2 which were 
set in motion by the upheaval caused by the war. 

It is quite natural that totalitarian tendencies, which are 
phenomena wholly ideological in character, should stand 
out sharply and sometimes even with an intolerable harsh¬ 
ness in the political sphere. Here, however, we may also 
observe a new phenomenon, one which is only partially 
connected with the totalitarian tendency, and in many 
respects is even wholly independent of it — I mean the 
modern glorification of the state, or “ etatisme.” 

“ ETATISME,” OR THE GLORIFICATION OF THE STATE 

By “ etatisme ” we mean that the state assumes functions 
and rights which are beyond its purely “ technical ” pur¬ 
poses. The state becomes an absolute; its value is su¬ 
preme; it is regarded as an ultimate form of “ integra¬ 
tion ” 3 of the scattered forces of history, as an ultimate 
which has the legal right to control all the spheres of hu¬ 
man life; economics, morals, education, the church, pri¬ 
vate relations, and public life. We must bear in mind 
that throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, 
but mostly during the post-war period, the functions of the 
state have been gradually and almost inevitably enlarged. 

The state began to regulate the sphere of private rela- 

2 See Keyserling’s La Revolution Mondiale. 

3 A term used by A. Smend in Verfassung und Verfassungsrecht. 


34 Church, Community, State and Education 

tions a long time ago; several years ago, too, it began to 
interfere in social and economic conflicts, and to extend its 
control to the family, the school, the press, public initia¬ 
tive and even to the church. Life itself has been under¬ 
mining the system of classical liberalism in which the pur¬ 
pose of the state was purely technical. More and more the 
state has ceased to be “ neutral,” as it was supposed to be 
under a secularized type of civilization. Apart, therefore, 
from the ideology of modern “ etatisme ” (which, by the 
way, never attains at the present time the degree of state 
absolutism maintained by Hegel in his doctrine of the 
state) we shall have to admit that “ etatisme,” as we see it 
now, is nothing new, but that it is merely a development 
and an exaggeration of something which already existed. 
If we are to set aside the totalitarian claims of the contem¬ 
porary dictatorships, we shall have to admit that modern 
“ etatisme,” even in its revolutionary activity, does not 
transgress the boundaries of law. Even in the cases where 
“ etatisme ” destroys or transgresses this or that legal norm, 
it will create new ones in their stead, thus proving its will 
to be a lawful phenomenon. 

Yet it is in its totalitarian tendencies, in the very theory 
of the “ totalitarian state,” 4 that “ etatisme ” leaves the 
sphere of law. Law only claims to control the outward 
behavior of man; it does not claim the right to control his 
inner life. Totalitarian tendencies, however, claim the 
right to influence and control man’s inner life. But this 
life lies outside the framework of law, and is governed by 
the totalitarian idea, by the scheme which, in its historical 
roots, and in its very essence, can be traced to that con¬ 
ception of history and of man which was brought into the 
world by Christianity. 

4 See O. Spann: Der Totale Staat. 


W. Zenkovsky 


35 


THE TOTALITARIAN IDEA 

The totalitarian idea, as it has been proclaimed by 
Christianity, is a call to an organic completeness (total¬ 
ity) , 5 both in all social relations and in man himself. This 
idea is nothing less than the mystical and historical doc¬ 
trine of the church, as developed by Saint Paul, which 
strives to introduce, by means of brotherly relations, an 
organic structure into all social groups, the family, and the 
community. (At that time the state had not been taken 
into account; it was only in the Middle Ages that the idea 
of transforming the state into the church arose.) This 
“organic structure ” means a functional and vital unity, 
such as we see in living organisms. It is in virtue of this 
conception that from the early days of Christianity the 
family has been regarded as a “ small church,” and that 
the early Christian community forever remains a type and 
an ideal of church life. (This ideal is present in the type 
of an ideal “ parish.”) 

More important and more complicated, however, was 
the change wrought by Christianity in private life as well 
as in the very conception of man. Christian anthropology 
(a doctrine which has not yet found its complete develop¬ 
ment and expression) is not a mere continuation and 
development of the anthropology of Scripture, with its 
basic ideas of the “ image of God ” in man and of original 
sin. The main emphasis in Christian anthropology lies on 
the doctrine of salvation, which opened the way for the 
restoration of the inner organic completeness which had 
been lost by the fall, but belonged to man as created by 
God. The fathers of the church (and especially St. Atha- 

5 The Russian word “ tselostnost ” has been introduced by the Slavo¬ 
philes, more precisely by Khomiakoff. We suggest “organic complete¬ 
ness ” as the nearest translation of it. 


36 Church, Community, State and Education 

nasius the Great) described this process of restoration by 
the term “ theosis.” This doctrine, however, was fully 
aware of the actual dualism in man — the light and the 
darkness which wars within his nature. (This was espe¬ 
cially emphasized in the teaching of St. Macarius the 
Great). 

This Christian doctrine of the dualism in man — the 
image of God and original sin, the spirit and the flesh, life 
eternal and life subject to death — has nothing in com¬ 
mon, save terminology, with that ancient dualism which 
regarded the flesh as the source of all that is irrational, 
mortal, and passionate. Christianity, on the other hand, 
is based entirely on the idea of the resurrection of the flesh, 
and this radically changes the very conception of “ flesh.” 
The way to the restoration of organic completeness in man 
is the way of mystical transfiguration through repentance, 
and not through an empirical growth in perfection or an 
ascetic process of self-development. No “ magic of deeds ” 
can either effect a transfiguration of personality or van¬ 
quish the actual dualism in man. Unity with God and 
transfiguration through grace can alone achieve this. In 
the light of this teaching on the way to achieve organic 
completeness in man, Christianity gives a new interpreta¬ 
tion of the mystery of human freedom (mysterium liber- 
tatis ). Freedom is, of course, connected with the mystery 
of individuality as such, for personality confirms and re¬ 
veals itself only in freedom; yet, according to the Christian 
doctrine, as expressed by our Lord himself, we are fully 
free only when we “ know the truth, and the truth shall 
make you free ” (John viii. 32). 

The gift of freedom 6 cannot of course be taken away 
from man even when he is inclined towards evil; this 

6 For the further development of this subject see my essay, “ The Gift 
of Freedom ” (in Russian), Paris 1932. 


W. Zenkovsky 


37 

formal freedom of “ choice ” means something negative 
and stands for freedom of choice alone. The gift of free¬ 
dom reveals itself as a creative force only when we are 
united with God and abide in him. If we live apart from 
God and see no value in things divine, our heart is divided 
“ for where your treasure is there will your heart be also ” 
(Matt. vi. 21). Such division of heart strengthens the 
dark element of self which stands in opposition to the light 
and goodness of God, which is still operative within us al¬ 
though it is constantly being weakened by “ sin that dwell- 
eth in me ” (Rom. vii. 17). Christian organic complete¬ 
ness is not something that is given us, it is something that 
we have yet to attain, and the gift of freedom, while im¬ 
mutable in its formal content, is completely revealed only 
in the measure that we give ourselves up to light and good¬ 
ness. 

Christianity calls man to an inner organic completeness, 
to the purification and transfiguration of the heart, and not 
merely to “ good behavior.” Christianity conceives such 
transfiguration of the heart as a life in God, that is, a life 
in the church, the mystical body of Christ. In other words, 
Christianity teaches us that the creative power of freedom 
is revealed not in the isolation of human beings from each 
other, but in a brotherly union of all in Christ. Freedom, 
while rooted in the profound depths of personality, in 
its unique individuality, is not given to the isolated indi¬ 
vidual, but to the many in mystical union through broth¬ 
erly love — in other words, it is given to the church. This 
is the Christian “ totalitarian idea ” which applies to man 
in the completeness and unity of his outer and his inner 
life, and not merely to his behavior alone. Further, the 
Christian totalitarian idea does not apply to the isolated 
individual, but to the living human community, to the 
organic unity of the church. 


38 Church, Community, State and Education 


THE FATE. OF THE TOTALITARIAN IDEA 

It would be out of place here to trace in detail the 
growth of this idea in the history of Christian nations; this 
story has already been told many times, and told well. I 
would merely remind the reader that in the Middle Ages 
the totalitarian idea was strongly emphasized, but in a very 
one-sided way, at the expense of individual freedom; per¬ 
sonality was given no opportunity for free development; 
the church may be said to have engulfed personality; the 
church determined the whole world view as well as the 
actual modes of life, without the individual having any 
part in the process. Thus the Christian message of free¬ 
dom was distorted. In this sense the whole of modern 
civilization was not merely a revolt against the church, but 
rather it was a return to the message of freedom. The 
modern period, therefore, is saturated with the desire for 
freedom and is always passionately on the defensive against 
any infringement of its liberties. The key to the whole 
system of secularism is separation from the church, libera¬ 
tion from her control. The whole ideology of the “ au¬ 
tonomy ” of civilization was evolved in the name of the 
freedom of personality. The experience of the Middle 
Ages has borne its fruit; at the present time the Christian 
consciousness will not tolerate either a return to the med¬ 
ieval regime, or any infringement or deprivation of free¬ 
dom, for freedom produces and develops both a sense of 
responsibility and a creative initiative of personality. 

On the other hand, the Christian consciousness felt it 
could not reject the totalitarian idea; therefore, even to 
this very day the Christian mind feels a certain inclination 
towards a “ New Medievalism.” 7 Yet the whole of the 
modern period was controlled by the spirit of secularism, 
7 See Nicolas Berdyaev: The New Middle Ages. 


W. Zenkovsky 


39 

that is, it rejected totalitarianism in all its forms, both 
personal and social. 

THE CRISIS OF SECULARISM 

Strictly speaking, secularism was not anti-Christian. It 
was merely anti-ecclesiastical in the sense that it rejected 
the totalitarian claims of the church and led the activity of 
the church into the channels of legal norms. One of the 
new tasks of the state has been to be both an expression 
and a defense of “ neutrality,” that is, to insure equal 
freedom to all manifestations of civilized life. From the 
point of view of law, this established a certain balance in 
the mutual relations between the different spheres of 
civilized life and secured comparative harmony. For the 
church, however, with its intrinsic purpose of embracing 
the whole of life — personal, social, historical — this con¬ 
stituted a real persecution, a painful and trying hindrance 
to the expression of its creative forces. 

The church has endured and is still enduring this 
oppression. But life, based on the principles of secularism, 
contained within itself the germs of a serious disease, an 
accumulation of poisonous and fatal elements which 
inclined it towards nihilism. That civilization which was 
conceived as the creation of free personality when it was 
separated from the church, was gradually broken up into 
numerous separate independent spheres. It was impos¬ 
sible to compensate for this inner disintegration of civiliza¬ 
tion by raising personality to the level of an absolute. 
Religion and morality, social duties and submission to law, 
loyalty to the nation and a responsible participation in 
common life — all this has gradually lost its autonomy and 
become the “ property ” of personality, 8 which was recog¬ 
nized to be free in everything. The attempt to found a 

s The Ego and His Own, by Stirner. 


40 Church, Community, State and Education 

super-individualism along the lines of transcendentalism, a 
scheme that would limit freedom of personality “ from 
above ” (Kant and Kantianism), did not go beyond the 
sphere of philosophy, and history continued to tend more 
and more toward relativism and even skepticism, and 
consequently toward a “ dehumanization ” of life, to use an 
expression of Nicolas Berdyaev. 

Liberty proved to be most ambiguous in the midst of 
this development along the lines of secularism. First of 
all, the historical reality of freedom (not as it was declared 
by the system of law) appeared to be quite negligible. 9 
Still more fatal and more dreadful was the fact that evil 
grew and developed at the expense of freedom, and some¬ 
times even in its name, while the growth of the good was 
insignificant and languid. Freedom, separated from its 
religious roots, inclined towards evil, rather than towards 
good, toward license rather than toward loyalty to good 
impulses. Good, according to an expression of V. Solo- 
vieff, became “ suspect ” as to its actual strength, and 
needed “ justification ” 10 as a way of creativeness and active 
participation in life. Such a bitter admission of the impo¬ 
tence of good on the basis of freedom led to the develop¬ 
ment of the revolutionary spirit, of an idealistic scheme 
which aimed at achieving historical and social good by 
means of coercion, that is, it attempted to create an order 
in which freedom of personality would be so limited from 
without , that evil would become impossible. 

The same spirit, feeling that good was not sufficiently 
“ guaranteed ” by the regime of personal freedom, pointed 
to another solution, which consisted in the limitation of 
freedom from within by means of education, that is, in the 
achieving of a state in which personality would no longer 

9 See Nicolas Berdyaev: The Fate of Man in the Modem World. 

io V. Solovieff’s main work on ethics is The Justification of Good. 


W. Zenkovsky 


4i 

choose between good and evil, but would strive after good 
alone. Personality would thus be deprived of the gift of 
freedom. These are the conclusions of secularism, which 
revealed themselves long before the war. The war had 
only to lay bare all the emptiness and sterility of the whole 
system of civilization based on these conclusions. 

MODERN DICTATORSHIPS AND THE TOTALITARIAN 
TENDENCIES WITHIN THEM 

Neither faith in freedom, nor democracy, nor the ide¬ 
ology of the enlightenment, proved able to defend good¬ 
ness, order, and unity; all these did not, of course, die out 
completely, yet they became the lot of a minority, which 
sought comfort in calling itself a “ cultural elite” The 
return to historical health has proved to be possible — and 
no sound observer of modern times could deny it — only 
through power . Herein lies the historical inevitableness, 
if one may say so, the historical “ justification ” for dictator¬ 
ships, which we see today in great and in small nations, 
a tendency which penetrates (though it be in a disguised 
form) even into those few countries which still remain 
faithful to democracy. 

Yet having received a “ mandate ” for the cleansing of 
life, contemporary dictatorships (in a greater or smaller 
measure, and almost always against their own will) have 
become an expression of the profound reaction against 
the old system of civilization. They have thus been forced 
to bring about the change in civilization for which the 
spirit of the day is longing. The totalitarian tendencies, as 
an ideological phenomenon, as the hidden operation of 
the possible future renaissance of Christianity, found 
themselves forced into contemporary dictatorships. Even 
now, as before, the totalitarian idea, in its depth, is con¬ 
nected with Christianity, but the totalitarian tendencies 


42 Church, Community, State and Education 

(whose significance it is hard to comprehend unless we 
bear in mind their roots in the totalitarian idea), although 
in most cases they present this idea in a one-sided manner, 
and often disfigure it, are still to be taken as evidence of 
the fact that Christian forces have not ceased to operate 
in history. This may sound like a paradox — the existence 
of totalitarian tendencies in modern dictatorships means 
that we have entered upon a new epoch in civilization. 

The most significant elements in this new process, as 
we see it, are: the struggle with individualism, with the 
absolute claims of personality, as well as with the division 
of civilization into a series of independent spheres. Inward 
and outward organic completeness, even though it be taken 
in a limited sense, is a theme of the “ new man,” for whose 
emergence all are longing today — both those in power 
and the ideologists of contemporary movements. This is 
why modern dictatorships instinctively, and therefore the 
more insistently and passionately, stake all on the younger 
generation. We may expect the adult to be outwardly 
loyal to the new slogans; under certain circumstances we 
may even expect sincere enthusiasm on their part. But the 
task of achieving a new type of civilization cannot be 
accomplished by such means — it requires “ new men,” 
and this is why those who wield authority struggle so des¬ 
perately and so passionately to capture the younger genera¬ 
tion. 


UTOPIAN IDEAS IN PEDAGOGY 

These efforts to create “ new men ” are not inspired in 
the very least by any belief in the mystical rejuvenation of 
man at which Christianity aims in its call to repentance. 
The totalitarian movements of the present day do not 
begin by preaching repentance, nor do they lead to repent¬ 
ance. This is why they not only reject Christian elements 


W. Zenkovsky 


43 

with scorn but they are bitterly hostile to them, for the 
totalitarian movements themselves desire, in some degree 
at least, to take the place of the church. 

The general educational plan (which was visionary in 
the extreme from start to finish) consists in creating (in a 
certain degree, in keeping with the recipes of “ Emile ”) 
a kind of educational hothouse for the young, in which 
they are isolated in air-tight compartments and thus 
shielded from the storms and the chaos of the present day. 
The aim of this system is to prevent them from developing 
a critical mind; thus they are provided with a one-sided 
environment; a certain philosophy of life, imposed from 
above, is instilled into them; and thus the gift of freedom 
is fettered from within and used only in one given direction. 
It would be a mistake to think that contemporary dictator¬ 
ships are concerned simply with the repression of freedom 
in the younger generation — such an attitude does not 
exist. What actually happens is this: a conscious or uncon¬ 
scious attempt is made to shield youth from the possibility 
of and the necessity for choice; having eliminated the 
alternatives, the authorities hope that the younger people 
will accept the views of their elders without criticism, and 
that willingly and even passionately they will strive to 
realize the ideals which they have been taught. There is 
no desire to suppress or deny the gift of freedom; what the 
authorities desire is but to capture it, and, of course, to 
capture and use it solely for their own purposes. This is 
the utopian plan which is the fatal result of the effort to 
dethrone personality regarded as an absolute, or in other 
words, to get rid of the individualism which lay at the 
root of the former system of culture. 

To a great extent authority is ready to yield to the 
younger generation, but only on condition that the latter is 
well under its control. The attention of the authorities, 


44 Church, Community, State and Education 

therefore, is mainly directed towards the various youth 
organizations rather than to the schools. Thus dictator¬ 
ships great and small are seeking support for their utopian 
system for the education and re-education of youth. The 
authorities, with stubborn insistence, strive to penetrate 
into the realm of education. Finding almost no resistance 
— because of the long-standing crisis in which it stands — 
the authorities seek to impose their own policy in an aus¬ 
tere and sometimes even a harsh spirit. 

GENERAL REMARKS ON THE AUTONOMY OF PEDAGOGY 

In connection with the general development of secular¬ 
ism, and of the principle of the autonomy of the different 
spheres of culture in the nineteenth century, this prin¬ 
ciple also penetrated into pedagogy. Owing to the devel¬ 
opment of the science of psychology, and more particularly 
of child psychology, educational thought was inspired by 
the idea of the inherent powers which operate in the 
development of the child. In the realm of education the 
idea of freedom was emphasized with peculiar force, along 
the lines of Rousseauism. In fact, it was Rousseau who 
introduced the idea that the nature of the child “ as such ” 
is wholly directed towards the good, that evil reactions, 
moral delinquencies, and criminal tendencies arise in the 
child’s soul only as a result of the influence of his environ¬ 
ment, that is, of that “ unnatural ” mode of life which is 
the actual content of our so-called civilization. This faith 
in a “ natural ” direction of the child’s soul toward good 
leaves no place for the doctrine of original sin. Hence the 
idea of freedom captured the realm of education and for a 
long time (indeed, almost down to our own day) this idea 
was regarded as the key to all the problems of education. 

The unhappy results of secular culture, however, to 
which we have already referred have undermined from 


W. Zenkovsky 


45 

within man’s faith in the salutary power of freedom, in 
his natural tendency towards good. The supreme place 
of personality in cultural ideology led educationalists to 
the idea that the most important task is to ensure the 
development of all the natural forces and gifts of person¬ 
ality, after which personality should itself freely determine 
its line of action. Thus, the main principle became not 
the insuring of good in children, but the insuring of their 
freedom. This gradually led to the degeneration of peda¬ 
gogy into anarchy (Tolstoy and various of his followers), 
and assigned to pedagogy a purely “ functional ” task, 
namely, that of developing all the powers and functions 
of a child, and then leaving him free to choose his own 
way. Of its own accord the school adopted the principle 
of “ neutrality,” in order to avoid imposing any restric¬ 
tions on the freedom of the child. In the name of freedom 
it has been considered inadmissible to lead a child in a 
certain definite spiritual direction. This inner self¬ 
deprivation of pedagogy was the direct result of its “ auton¬ 
omy.” A “ secret secularism ” reigned in the sphere of 
education; the same “ flowers of evil ” which flourished 
so abundantly outside of the sphere of education began 
to appear within it. 

When the first signs of a reaction against the old system 
of culture appeared, the realm of education was the first 
to be threatened. It is a very significant fact that A. 
Ferriere, the acknowledged head of the “ free education 
movement,” in his book Le Progres Spirituel (1927) does 
not speak of the freedom of the child but of the liberation 
of the child, that is, of the development in him of the 
gift of freedom, and of the inward transfiguration of 
freedom by the ideals of truth and goodness. Both the 
Soviet and the National-Socialist education systems, 
although they differ from each other fundamentally. 


46 Church, Community, State and Education 

both in ideology and method, have expressed their new 
ideas with great force in their conception of freedom, a 
conception which differs in principle from that of “ autono¬ 
mous pedagogy.” 

EDUCATIONAL THEORY AND METHOD IN 
SOVIET RUSSIA 

I do not propose to enter here into the details or the 
history of Soviet pedagogical theory. It is not necessary 
here, and, moreover, much has already been written on 
this subject. 11 More essential to our purpose is a clear 
understanding of the object of the “ cultural revolution ” 
which was directed by a peculiar totalitarian idea and 
carried out in school policy. “ Integral ” communism 
concerned itself with far more than a change in the social 
order. It aimed at a total transformation of all human 
relationships, of the fundamental world-view of every 
individual. The change of the social order for the com¬ 
munist is but a prelude to the emancipation of man from 
every trace of his bourgeois heritage. This means that not 
only economic individualism must disappear, but every 
other kind of individualism as well. Communism, in its 
struggle against individualism, strives to eliminate from 
the very concept of personality every element tending 
toward self-isolation. 

According to communism, personality should find its 
raison d'etre only in the collective life. This, however, 
does not imply a total suppression of the gift of freedom, 
but rather a new interpretation of freedom. Communism 
needs daring men, with creative abilities. The element of 
“ titanism ” is one of the more obvious elements in com- 

II See also my essay: “ Die Russische Padagogik im XX. Jahrhundert,” 
in Padagogik d. Gegenxvart: Herausgegeben von J. Schroteller, Miinchen, 
1 933 * 


W. Zenkovsky 


47 

munism, but the idea of freedom of choice between “ com¬ 
munistic good ” and any kind of anti-communist (and, 
therefore, evil) order lies quite outside the range of pos¬ 
sible alternatives. Free inspiration by the communist 
ideal, excluding the possibility of criticism; a call for crea¬ 
tive revolutionary “ titans,” of course, committed to the 
communist good — these two dilemmas constitute the pro¬ 
gramme. Personality dare not lift itself above the social 
whole, must not oppose itself to it. Yet, on the other hand, 
loss of personality must be avoided. 

How can the ideal of the collective be achieved without 
sacrificing possible “ titans ”? How can freedom develop 
without giving men opportunity for criticism? Com¬ 
munism tried to resolve these dilemmas by two methods: 
first, by a ruthless elimination (not only in adults, but 
in children also) of everything bearing the slightest trace 
of the old individualism. Thus children of “ non-prole¬ 
tarian ” descent were allowed to enter neither secondary 
schools nor universities. Second, all hopes were pinned 
on this positive programme: the thorough grounding of 
the younger generation in the new culture, the new free¬ 
dom by means of “ communist education,” that is, by 
means of a radical refashioning, totally subject to the 
state, of the entire school and extra-curricular life of the 
child. The object here was more than outward mastery; 
the aim was to fire the growing mind with genuine en¬ 
thusiasm, to keep it at the same time under complete 
control, and to make of every member of the younger gen¬ 
eration an obedient tool in the hands of the Party. 

To this end the plan to weaken the influence of the 
family was set forth with complete frankness. Traditional 
utopian schemes have always conceived of the family as 
the main bulwark and teacher of “ bourgeois individu¬ 
alism.” Hence, in the name of the “ cultural revolution,” 


48 Church, Community, State and Education 

Communism marked the family for destruction. In order 
to prevent the family from exercising its “ poisonous ” 
influence, the school, and especially the youth organiza¬ 
tions, were called upon to serve as a wedge between parents 
and children. Children were urged to oppose their par¬ 
ents, to spy on them. Public “ repudiation ” of parents was 
greatly encouraged in cases where the parents either be¬ 
longed to the old order of things or were “ suspect ” by the 
very nature of their occupation, as in the case of ministers 
of religion. 

Further, Soviet educational policy, during its first 
period, proclaimed a drastic campaign against educational 
“ humanism,” against the development of the “ human 
being ” in the child — children counted only as potential 
future strugglers for the communist order. The campaign 
called for the crushing of every remnant of the humanistic 
individualistic spirit. To this end the Soviet school, up 
to the time of the very recent reforms, made a sharp 
distinction between children of proletarian descent and 
children of non-proletarian descent. By special commit¬ 
tees within the schools the children were enlisted to help to 
further this discrimination. Only children who belonged 
to communist organizations such as the “ Pioneers ” or 
the Young Communist League could stand near the 
head of the class. The aim of the Soviet school was not to 
build up “ man as such,” not to develop the personality 
of the child, but to train and develop an active worker 
for communism, wholly devoted to the interests of the 
Soviet order. Thus communist totalitarianism invaded 
the sphere of education. 

This plan to capture completely the soul of youth, to 
give to it a ready-made world view, a prepared set of 
feelings, a definite philosophy of life, to excise all that 
could not be reconciled with the communist ideal — all 


W. Zenkovsky 


49 

this “ ideocratic ” scheme with regard to the younger 
generation had for its aim something which the church 
alone can achieve, the Christian Church with her message 
of the restoration of man to his primitive integrity, and 
her message of victory over sin. It may be noted that 
“ original sin ” in man means bourgeois ideology to the 
communist. Communism repudiates also Rousseau’s 
theory of the “ natural good ” crushed by civilization. 
Soviet theory believes only in “ revolutionary enthusiasm ” 
and in this sense it emphasizes in the name of communism 
an inner “ transfiguration ” of man. 12 This transfiguration 
of man had hitherto been the prerogative of the church. 

It is hardly worth while here to dwell on the system of 
the Soviet school. In passing we may note, for example, 
its conception of labor as education, its theory of the 
“ dying off of the school,” the project of the “ polytechnical 
school,” the connection of the school system with the 
factory, the centralization of the entire range of school 
work in the hands of the state. What is more important 
for us to bear in mind is that after the first fourteen years 
there came about a very strong reaction in Soviet educa¬ 
tional policy. 

THE VICTORY OF EDUCATIONAL REALISM IN 
SOVIET POLICY 

This reaction, which bears the name of educational 
realism, has not yet reached its peak. By realism is meant 
the elimination of all utopian elements, as well as the 
circumvention, partial at least, of the totalitarian ten¬ 
dencies which had originally determined the means and 
methods of Soviet education. To a large extent this is 
connected with the general failure of the Soviet regime, 

12 See the interesting book by D£vaud: La Pedagogie Scolaire en Russie 
Sovietique, Paris, 1932. 


50 Church, Community, State and Education 

now maintained only by terror. This failure led the 
regime to abandon in various realms of life the principle 
of forcing unsuitable forms upon life processes. In the 
educational sphere, the “ totalitarian objective ” has 
proved to the school to be an obstacle to the fulfilment of 
its proper task. More and more the schools are allowed to 
conduct their work in accordance with “ old ” methods, 
that is, they prepare for life educated and disciplined 
workers. All the elements which were forcibly introduced 
into the school system by the totalitarian tendencies, by 
integral communism, have now been shifted from the 
school into the youth organizations — the Comsomol. 
The latter has been set free (Congress of 1936) from its 
former purely political objectives. Now the Comsomol 
aims at the final elimination of all traces in youth of the old 
bourgeois civilization and at the patient and gradual cul¬ 
tivation of “ creative enthusiasm ” in the younger genera¬ 
tion. All this points to the significant fact that a simpli¬ 
fied system of “ manufacturing ” a synthetic psychology for 
youth is now being rejected in favor of a realistic 
approach. The utopian aim of forming “ new men ” now 
passes from the school to the youth organizations, leaving 
the school to seek its proper educational objectives (see 
below for the parallel process in Italy). This reflects the 
new realistic policy of Soviet education. To achieve their 
ends they no longer regard it as necessary to “ drug ” chil¬ 
dren, but concentrate all efforts instead toward the capture 
of the freedom of the child’s intellect as developed by the 
schools. The real problem of totalitarian education thus 
reveals itself with greater clarity than before 1933, when 
utopian schemes prevailed. 


W. Zenkovsky 


5i 


THE CONCEPTION OF COMMUNITY AND CULTURE 
(OR “ VOLK ”?) IN GERMANY 

The German attempt to master the “ theme of life ” and 
to lay the foundation of a new culture and civilization in 
Germany, presents quite a different picture. The whole 
movement which has been developed under the influence 
of National Socialism is also determined by a reaction 
against the old form of culture and civilization. 13 Yet 
the motive is different from that which obtained in Soviet 
Russia. A group holding a very definite ideology is not 
only at the head of the state, but it is also controlling and 
guiding the thought of contemporary Germany. Owing 
to the complexity of the basic ideas of National Socialism, 
it is difficult to determine in what the main and the most 
effective force of this movement consists. I personally 
believe that emphasis should be laid not on the question 
of race, and not even on the mythology of “ blood and 
soil to me all this does not seem to express the actual 
essence of the contemporary movement in Germany, and 
it can easily fall away without doing any harm to the 
fundamental principle. This basic principle is the 
volkische Idee, which is not so much nationalism, in 
the usual meaning of the word, but rather das Volkstum, 
the people. Not the nation but the people; not an histori¬ 
cal union, but the organic unity of the spirit of the people, 
in the same sense perhaps as the “ organic ” idea was 
understood in the days of romanticism. 14 The significant 
factor here is the primacy of the people over individual 
personality. A very important and really creative change 
in cultural ideology is taking place in Germany in 

13 Gottfried Benn’s Der Neue Staat und die Intellectuellen, 1933, gives 
a most interesting description of the new conception of culture in present- 
day Germany. 14 Adam Muller and others. 


52 Church, Community, State and Education 

this connection. The ideas of Krieck, an educationalist 
and philosopher who joined the National-Socialist move¬ 
ment from the very start, are most interesting in this 
connection. “ In our day,” he writes, 15 “ the conception of 
personality has received a new significance and a new 
content. Personality does not mean the individual man 
who has achieved the development of his capacity in the 
desert of empty freedom. He becomes a personality who 
achieves his maturity through service to the whole, that 
is, to the people. This maturity confers upon him the gift 
of vision, opens up before him a wide field of action with 
responsible tasks. A personality necessarily becomes a 
leader, and outside of this we neither know nor recognize 
personality.” It would be a mistake to believe that this is 
only a chance phrase of Krieck’s, a lapsus linguae. Such a 
doctrine of personality is in line with the Ganzheits- 
gedanke, 16 that is, it is in line with totalitarian tendencies, 
which dominate the contemporary mind. While the indi¬ 
vidualist of the past epoch proceeded from the separate 
" I ” and thus turned the people into a mere sum total of 
personalities, leaving no room for the idea of the organic 
structure of the whole — here we see the effect of the other 
extreme — the primacy of the whole leads to the admission 
that not every individual is a personality (or may become 
such as his character develops), but only one to whom 
it is given to be a “ leader ” in the emphasis of some 
truth, large or small. This statement contains both a great 
truth and a great falsehood, for a paradoxical blending 
of truth and falsehood is generally characteristic of the 
totalitarian tendencies of our day. 

It is true that ontologically personality does not precede 
the whole. By asserting this, we set ourselves free from the 
mistake of classical individualism, which naturally led to 

is E. Krieck, Nationalsozialistische Erziehung, 1933, p. 10. 

is E. Krieck, Nationalsozialistische Erziehung, 1933, p. 18. 


W. Zenkovsky 


53 

the enthronement of personality, to atomization, to all 
the blind alleys of “ isolation.” Personality “ finds itself ” 
in the whole, and this whole is, of course, the people — 
yet personality forms itself in every individual, and not 
in “ leaders ” alone. For if it is the sense of responsibility 
which forms personality, this is a responsibility not to the 
people, and not even to the state, but to that which domi¬ 
nates both people and state, that which is not subject 
to relative standards set up by history. Transcendental 
philosophy called it by the term “ sphere of values,” 
whereas we Christians assert that personality is formed 
only in fellowship with God in its religious “ action.” 

How can das Volkstum, which is built up and destroyed 
in history, which lives through periods of crisis and decay 
and often moves in wrong directions, be made into an 
absolute? Das Volkstum is relative, even more than any¬ 
thing else — it is historic in its very essence. And, there¬ 
fore, responsibility to das Volkstum can by no means be, as 
Krieck would maintain, that element which forms per¬ 
sonality. The truth here is this: personality is formed 
through communion with the super-personal principle; 
to look for this principle in the people, is to make the 
formation of personality dependent upon a basis which 
is variable and often sinful and diseased. Further, can the 
whole of personality be exhausted by its own activity in 
the name and for the sake of the people? Even if this 
people were unique in the world, or if it were to become 
the whole of humanity, even then the human spirit can¬ 
not finally spend itself in history; it demands and seeks 
for the eternal, the super-historical. It can be truly said, 
that only he serves his people who lifts his service above 
the conventions and relativisms of historical life, who 
lights the spirit of his people by his own reverence for 
eternal truth, eternal good — for God. 

In its search for a new civilization, in its endeavor to 


54 Church, Community, State and Education 

overcome the faults of the preceding epoch, the new 
ideology in Germany has utilized totalitarian tendencies, 
and strives to evoke in man all that enthusiasm which 
comes from identification with a whole — the people. By 
this means the new German ideology seeks to solve the 
problem of freedom, to remove its sting, to eliminate its 
element of possible rebellion, the poison of self-determined 
isolation, and at the same time to fire the soul of man with 
genuine enthusiasm. Here — as in all other “ ideocra- 
cies ” — all hopes are laid not on adults, but on youth. It 
follows that education becomes the focal point for the real¬ 
ization of these hopes. Education is expected to excise all 
remnants of the past, to bring forth the “ new man,” to 
create an “ integral man ” who gives himself up completely 
in creative service to his people, a man who knows no self¬ 
ishness, who has no inner struggles and misgivings, who 
always follows the “ line ” set forth by the “ leader.” 

Since the schools submitted supinely to authority, the 
attempt to capture the younger generation for the new 
civilization shifted its attention to the problem of extra¬ 
mural youth organizations. These youth organizations, 
strong because of Germany’s traditional Jugendbewegung, 
the state has determined to dominate completely, making 
them channels of the “ cultural revolution ”; the driving 
force of National Socialism. To achieve this, there was 
decreed a centralization of all youth organizations in the 
hands of the state. As in Italy, all sports organizations, 
all the physical training of the young people, are centered 
in the state. This is a very characteristic feature of totali¬ 
tarian procedure — sport has for some time held a large 
place in contemporary civilization. The processes of 
“ integration ” operate with especial force in all that is 
connected with sport — in private, national, and even 
international life. While this is a prominent symbol of 


W. Zenkovsky 


55 

contemporary life, it does not imply barbarization or any 
regress in civilization. On the contrary it is involved in 
the reaction against the past epoch, against its intellec- 
tualism, its loss of organic unity with nature, its disa¬ 
vowal of the “ integral nature ” in man. 17 

In its endeavor to win youth, to bring about its 
voluntary acceptance of the new ideology, to conquer 
“ the heart of youth,” National Socialism strives to con¬ 
vince every young person that personality receives its force 
and its freedom only through identification with the 
Volksgeist . 18 Those in authority say, in other words, 
that personality mystically depends upon Volksgeist. This 
“ organic ” doctrine ascribes to the people exactly that 
which Christianity believes to be the attribute of the 
church. In place, however, of spiritual unity, which is the 
church, this Volksmythologie gives us unity of “ blood and 
soil.” 

We stated above our conviction that the creative energies 
of National Socialism are found not in its theory of race, 
but rather in its search for a super-individual reality, in 
union with which personality overcomes its isolation. By 
this union also the inner chaos of freedom is overcome, and 
freedom without chaos, by its release of creative energies, 
fills personality with a power transcending individual 
power. In order to dominate personality, to inspire 
personality, the people must assume that significance 
hitherto held by “ humanity in general.” 19 From this line 
of thought is derived the idea of the supreme “ sover¬ 
eignty,” the “ totality ” of people and state. 20 The individ¬ 
ual man enters into a deep (mystical) union with his 


17 On this see the interesting book by G. Giese: Geist im Sport. 
is Compare with Winfrid: Sinnwandel d. formalen Bildung, 1935. 
is Giese, Staat und Erziehung, speaks (p. 33) of the “ Tyranny of the 
humanity idea." 20 Ibid., p. 151. 


56 Church, Community, State and Education 

people, with the state, through his devotion to the state 
(Staatsgesinnung ). He thus achieves a “ rejuvenation ” of 
personality, he is liberated from the evil effects of the 
epoch of individualism. 

EDUCATION AND STATE IN ITALY 

I should like to add a few words concerning Italy. In 
Italy educational reforms are more free from artificial 
pressure upon youth. Even here, however, the state — 
which is recognized as the supreme super-individual value 
— strives to become the exclusive object of love and 
service. Here, too, education is commissioned to take 
possession of the child’s freedom by filling his soul with 
enthusiasm, with heroic impulse. The Italian system does 
not interfere with family life, does not hinder the church 
in the latter’s task of religious education of the children, 
but directs its attention to organized sport. As early as 
1923 the physical education of children and youth was 
separated from the school in order to center supervision 
in the hands of the state. In 1926 the “ Opera Ballila ” 
was founded, and a year later this organization was en¬ 
trusted with leadership of the whole system of physical 
training of children. This effectively removed control 
over such training from the Ministry of Education. Now 
all children and adolescents in Italy between the ages of 
6 and 18 form an organization which, while having 
physical training as its basis, aims at capturing the soul of 
youth. As a means of attaining this objective, the school, 
in its educational capacity, is almost ignored. The chief 
“ problem of the new culture,” that is, the overcoming of 
individualism and the “ directing and governing ” of the 
freedom of youth (without, however, suppressing that 
freedom), falls for solution to the organizations for chil¬ 
dren and youth. By concentrating entire control in the 


W. Zenkovsky 


57 

hands of the state, the exclusive influence of the state in all 
phases of this work is insured. Besides, the physical edu¬ 
cation basis of all these organizations marks them as be¬ 
longing to the “ new epoch.” 

THE PRIMARY EMPHASIS IN TOTALITARIAN POLICY 

As has already been pointed out, the totalitarian tenden¬ 
cies in contemporary life constitute the reaction against 
the entire preceding cultural epoch, rather than any crisis 
in education considered by itself. In spite of this wider 
basis, the totalitarian tendencies exert their chief force in 
the sphere of education. 

We must bear in mind, first of all, that centralization, 
as such, in the hands of the state, of all education both 
inside and especially outside the school, is not the goal of 
totalitarian policy. It is rather a means toward the achieve¬ 
ment of a goal of more profound character. Suppression 
of private initiative, forcing the family into the back¬ 
ground, handicapping or eliminating the church in its 
work with children and youth — all this is not an inde¬ 
pendent reality, but the manifestation and the expression 
of forces of deeper significance. 

The aim is, fundamentally, to bring about a new type, 
a new pattern of culture, through complete control of 
the school and all youth organizations: a new civilization 
with new ideology, eliminating individualistic isolation 
and the old concept of freedom, demanding not only ex¬ 
clusive loyalty to the “ whole ” but enthusiastic love as 
well. The meaning of the “ whole ” — party, state, people 
— varies, of course, in different nations. The central pur¬ 
pose in these new experiments in education is a controlled 
development of all the capacities of man, which without 
suppressing the gift of freedom would direct this freedom 
toward ways pointed out from above. 


58 Church, Community, State and Education 


RELATIVE SUCCESS OF THE TOTALITARIAN PLAN 
IN EDUCATION 

Any evaluation of this totalitarian plan so far must admit 
its relative success as education. At this date, of course, 
any general conclusion as to the results of the totalitarian 
experiment in education would be premature and even 
unwarranted. On the other hand, one cannot deny that 
the different states have achieved many of their objectives. 
In Italy the system of fascism has always been free from 
the excesses which characterize the German and Soviet 
regimes. All unprejudiced observers agree that Italian 
youth is enthusiastically devoted to the Duce and fully 
accepts the official ideology. It is another matter as to 
whether this state of affairs is either stable or permanent 
— any answer on this point must be only tentative. In 
Germany, too, the younger generation enthusiastically 
follows those in power. 

We must admit, with certain definite reservations, that 
Soviet Russia, too, has met with some success at this point. 
When dealing with Soviet Russia, however, it is more 
difficult to establish a correct “ hierarchy of facts/’ yet 
one cannot deny either that vast numbers of young people 
wholeheartedly share a great part of the “ credo ” of the 
party, or that, disregarding the presence of a great deal 
of “ ordered ” enthusiasm and conviction dictated from 
above, there does exist a real “ creative extase,” as well as 
a genuine enthusiasm with regard to the titanic plans and 
slogans coming from official circles. 

What is the price, however, of this relative success? 
What is its basis? Is the problem of the new epoch actually 
solved in the realm of education? 


W. Zenkovsky 


59 


UTILIZATION OF YOUTH’S LOVE OF SPORT 

Youth’s love of sport provides the positive basis of the 
“ relative success ” achieved in the sphere of education 
by the totalitarian tendencies. The emergence of this 
preoccupation with sport is no superficial phenomenon. 
It has deep roots in a spiritual change in life . 21 As con¬ 
trasted with the abstract intellectualism, and the false atti¬ 
tude toward physical life held during the past epoch, love 
of sport is in itself an expression of a desire for a natural 
“ organic completeness ” of life. 

By the assistance and control of youth organizations, 
the dictatorships easily capture the younger generation. 
The same is true in democratic countries where this move¬ 
ment has gained a foothold. In this process, however, it 
is not so much youth who are conquered by the authorities, 
but rather the latter who follow the lead of youth. All this 
should be borne in mind in order to make a correct evalua¬ 
tion of the resulting phenomenon and not to overestimate 
the “ achievements ” of those in power. 

The fact that youth occupies the center of attention 
provides another very significant factor in the capture of 
youth by authority. While the preceding epoch paid but 
little attention to the younger generation, youth sees today 
all doors open before it. In addition, totalitarian tenden¬ 
cies are congenial to the temper of contemporary youth. 
This implies a momentous change in modern social his¬ 
tory, a development quite independent of any particular 
regime, and even of any particular authoritative plans. 
Even the overdeveloped nationalism which animates 
most states, and especially the dictatorial states, finds a 
very real response on the part of the young. It is true that 
a number of negative elements provide the basis of this 
21 See G. Giese’s Geist im Sport , referred to above. 


60 Church, Community, State and Education 

widespread response of youth to authority. This is 
especially obvious in Germany, where hatred of the 
Versailles treaty proved to be a powerful factor in bring¬ 
ing about unity between the authorities and the people, 
young and old. In Soviet Russia the idea of “ foreign 
intervention ” is carefully cultivated in the minds of every¬ 
one, for the purpose of reviving and strengthening this 
same national sentiment. The “ Abyssinian episode,” 
which, to a very great extent, isolated Italy from the rest 
of the world, greatly helped to bring about an inner unity 
of the authorities with the people. 

THE UNREALITY OF THE TOTALITARIAN SOLUTION 
OF THE PROBLEM 

Without making any prophecy, we have grounds to 
affirm that the “ relative success ” of the totalitarian experi¬ 
ments in the realm of education conceals an unreal solu¬ 
tion to the problem of the epoch. The entire question 
rests fundamentally on the problem of freedom. It is quite 
possible to circumscribe freedom or to give it direction, but 
under no circumstances does this lead to the creation of a 
new cultural epoch, nor does it provide a solution to the 
basic problem with which our age so painfully struggles. 
Of course, man is free to circumscribe his freedom, but 
this way leads only to slavery and to degeneration, and 
signifies a renunciation of the achievements of civilization. 
If, however, we desire to preserve freedom in the heart of 
man and, at the same time, to provide safeguards against 
the atomization which is unavoidable under the old indi¬ 
vidualism — then we must openly proclaim that the solu¬ 
tion of this problem is possible only on the religious plane 
— in and through the church. 


W. Zenkovsky 


61 


TOWARD A NEW EPOCH 

There is, of course, another way out, namely that of try¬ 
ing to amend and correct the content and method of the 
preceding epoch by a series of compromises. It is possible 
that history may choose this particular way, yet it is 
evident that a solution through compromise does not 
eliminate the main defect, the fundamental error of the 
preceding epoch. If it is both senseless and inadmissible 
to suppress freedom, it is also wrong to believe that it is 
possible to overcome the inner chaos in freedom by means 
of partial limitations and external safeguards. This chaos 
can finally be overcome only along the line of a free desire 
for such limitation, that is, through self-limitation, self- 
discipline. All the totalitarian experiments of the day 
admit this, to a certain extent, in so far as they strive to 
evoke the “ enthusiasm of the masses ” to undergird their 
programs. Yet this artificially stimulated enthusiasm can¬ 
not last forever — it unavoidably calls forth an opposite 
reaction. In such “ enthusiasm ” it is fruitless to seek the 
key to the one true protection of the gift of freedom from 
chaos and inclination to evil. This achievement results 
only from self-discipline, it follows the inner struggle 
which can never he decreed from above. 

In the end, the state authority cannot solve the problem 
of the new epoch: totalitarian schemes derive their his¬ 
torical meaning and act creatively only because of their 
implicit religious basis. One can, of course, doubt whether 
we, in our time, have now actually entered the period of 
“ the Christian Renaissance,” yet whether we have or not, 
we are bound to maintain that, if the basic crisis of this 
epoch can in any wise be overcome, this will come about 
not through the state's interference in cultural processes , 
but through the church's assumption of her full respon - 


62 Church, Community, State and Education 

sibility for the character of civilization. The development 
of this theme lies outside the scope of the present study. 

THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION AND THE “ NEW EPOCH ” 

No one would counsel abandoning all that is true and 
valuable in the past system of education. The personal¬ 
ity of the child should be developed to the utmost of 
his capacities. Creative initiative, strength of character, 
consciousness of responsibility, must continue to receive 
attention. But granting this, the first concern is that the 
gift of freedom be developed through its inner illumina¬ 
tion by the spirit. The key to the new education lies here: 
the church must take up her educational responsibility 
for the spiritual illumination of personality. This means 
neither the suppression of freedom nor the limitation of 
freedom by reason, or by grafting on good habits, or by 
evoking an outburst of artificial enthusiasm — freedom 
finds its limitation only in the development of the spiritual 
life in the name of Christ the Saviour. 

By introducing the meaning of Christianity into the 
soul of the child, by imparting to the child the power of 
grace dwelling in the church, by awakening in his soul 
a Christian consciousness, and finally by developing his 
inner spiritual life through awareness of the fact that he 
is in the presence of God, and by humble submission to 
the will of God — in this way and in this way alone shall we 
illumine the gift of freedom — through its development 
and not through its limitation. 


RELATIONSHIP OF COMMUNITY, STATE, 
GOVERNMENT, CHURCH, AND SCHOOL 
IN THE UNITED STATES 


by 

Paul Monroe 



























































































































































































RELATIONSHIP OF COMMUNITY, STATE, 

GOVERNMENT, CHURCH, AND SCHOOL IN 
THE UNITED STATES 

The systems of education characteristic of the present 
generation may be roughly classified as three. These 
correspond with the systems of political and social organiza¬ 
tions which dominate the present. But these educational 
systems also embody, as do the political, social, and econo¬ 
mic systems, those forces or tendencies which are charac¬ 
teristic of the past. 

The first of these systems is that prevailing in most 
continental European countries. In these countries educa¬ 
tion is a function of government. The educational system 
was created and is now controlled by government for the 
purpose of maintaining the government structure and 
function. That function is primarily the maintenance of 
the national culture and the development of a national 
ideal. 

Education is thus the chief force upon which govern¬ 
ment depends for the realization of national group ideals. 
The extreme and most characteristic expressions of this 
form of education are those found in the totalitarian 
states of Germany, Italy, and Russia. Due to the process 
by which the educational system was evolved this atti¬ 
tude of complete control of education by government 
is true of most other continental European countries. It 
is also found for the most part in those countries where 
the social system is an offspring of continental Europe, 
as in the countries of Latin America, and in those coun- 

65 


66 Church, Community, State and Education 

tries where the educational system was developed largely 
on the model of the educational system of these continental 
European countries. This includes the educational sys¬ 
tems of most Oriental countries. One essential factor, if 
not the most essential factor, in these European countries 
is that in the past education was wholly in the hands of 
the church, as the church was the dominant institution 
for the realization of the cultural ideals of the nation. 
As the conception of an education universally effective de¬ 
veloped, this function of education was gradually handed 
over to the government by the church. 

The second type of educational system, that most in 
contrast with the one described above, is that found in 
Great Britain. Even in Great Britain one must revert to 
the eighteenth century or the early part of the nineteenth 
century to find this type in its clearest form. Here educa¬ 
tion is fundamentally an individual activity for the pur¬ 
pose of achieving individual standards of culture, usually 
expressed in terms of free personality. While this con¬ 
ception prevails in its clearest form, government has little 
to do with educational activities. Such activities are left 
to individual effort or to the effort of self-constituted and 
self-dependent groups. The church, though powerful in 
its influence, no longer controls directly; the government 
interferes but slightly, and that only recently to make more 
universal the incidence of education. 

The third type, if not a compromise between the other 
two extremes, at least lies midway between them. Govern¬ 
ment interferes to prevent the church or any other external 
force from controlling education, lays some kind of re¬ 
striction upon itself and gives control, support, and de¬ 
termination of the character of education to the state or 
to local groups. In other words, government itself en¬ 
deavors to keep its hands off education and leave to ex- 


Paul Monroe 


67 

pressions of the state other than political government the 
formulation and control of educational procedures. This 
midway type is characteristic of the United States. As with 
the second type this is found in its clearest form before the 
present generation; the experiences of the last generation 
have introduced new tendencies into all three types. In 
order to see clearly the characteristics one must revert to 
the period of development. 

Other papers in this series have been prepared to present 
the characteristic features of the first and second types 
mentioned above. It is the purpose of this paper to ex¬ 
plain the characteristics of the third type as they can be 
explained through historical development. It is no pur¬ 
pose of this paper to present a philosophical analysis or 
philosophical defense of this system. While the writer 
believes wholeheartedly in the validity of the system, he 
has this attitude probably because he is the product of that 
system and has passed his professional life in the operation 
and promotion of that system. 

Before proceeding with the attempt at historical analy¬ 
sis it is desirable to define some essential terms, particu¬ 
larly as, at times, they are given a different meaning in 
these papers. The terms government, state, nation, com¬ 
munity, administration are essential to a clear understand¬ 
ing of these types, but in their use these terms are often 
confused. It must be admitted that they do not possess a 
clear distinction in common use; yet their meaning as 
used must be made clear, because this exposition of the 
character of the three types of education depends to a 
large extent upon the consistent use of these terms. In the 
English use of the term “ government ” usually means 
the existing political administration. But this meaning in 
the United States is usually expressed by the word “ ad¬ 
ministration/’ In American usage the term “ govern- 


68 Church, Community, State and Education 

ment ” usually means the political organization of the 
state, and includes both federal and local government. 
This American distinction makes for a common misunder¬ 
standing of American life by those of other cultural back¬ 
grounds. The commonest form of political expression of 
the American “ state ” is through constitutional conven¬ 
tions. Such conventions are political expressions of the 
“ state ” but are not part of the “ government.” Yet the 
ideals which such constitutional conventions create be¬ 
come a part of the “ government ” as do the legislative and 
executive branches of the government which conventions 
also create. 

The American use of these terms is yet further compli¬ 
cated by the use of the term “ state ” in common parlance 
to indicate any one of the forty-eight commonwealths 
which constitute the federal union. This usage but indi¬ 
cates that originally the commonwealths or colonies were 
independent and that when sovereignty was removed from 
England to America it resided in the thirteen original 
colonies. The reservation of this sovereignty to the fed¬ 
eral union by the Constitution of 1789 further perpetu¬ 
ated this distinction between “ state ” and “ government.” 
This paper uses the term “ state ” only in this sense, and 
not in that of its more frequent use as synonymous with 
commonwealth. 

The state, then, is a political organization of the com¬ 
munity which expresses itself politically through gov¬ 
ernment, through constitutional conventions, and also, 
curiously enouh, through its educational system. The 
American educational system becomes then an expression 
of the state but not of the government. State universities, 
educational expressions of thirty-three of the forty-eight 
commonwealths, are controlled by boards of regents; these 
boards may be elected by the people, or appointed by the 


Paul Monroe 


69 

governor, or selected by the legislature to represent the 
people — that is, the state. After appointment such re¬ 
gents are no longer under the control of the political ap¬ 
pointing power and are removable only by termination of 
the period of appointment, or by court procedure. Local 
schools in cities or in other smaller governmental units 
are controlled by school boards. Such boards are usually 
elected by the people directly, always so in the case of 
local government units other than municipalities. In 
municipalities often the mayor appoints representatives 
of the people, that is, of the state. Such appointees again 
may only be removed by expiration of term or by order of 
court for incompetence or unfitness for office. 

In Professor Clarke’s paper the term “ community ” is 
constantly used to mean a group of people voluntarily 
associating themselves for some cultural purpose, or it may 
mean local government. In the United States when a 
community organizes for the support or control of schools 
it is the state through which it operates. 

The community as a voluntary organization, as a reli¬ 
gious or denominational group, also exists in the United 
States, and frequently, especially in the past, organized 
and supported schools. The large increase in parochial 
schools in recent years would indicate that this type of 
community organization for educational purposes was not 
confined to the past. 

The problem of terms is here somewhat further com¬ 
plicated by the fact that some powers are delegated. For 
example, the power of licensing teachers may be and usu¬ 
ally is assigned to some agency set up by the government. 
So also is the function of supervision. The legislature as 
a branch of government also frequently prescribes the con¬ 
tent of education. These functions then become illustra¬ 
tive of the way in which education is gradually passing 


70 Church, Community, State and Education 

step by step under the control of government. All this 
may yet be changed by the assertion of the fundamental 
power of the state as opposed to the delegated or enu¬ 
merated power of government. 

This conflict is essentially the basis of the present-day 
political controversy in the United States, a controversy 
that is so confusing to those outside of the American sys¬ 
tem and indeed confusing to Americans also. 

On the basis of this distinction between the people or 
“ community,” the “ state ” and “ government,” two points 
of significance emerge. First, how did these distinctions, 
especially in their bearing on education, develop? Second, 
what is the resulting relationship between “ state,” “ gov¬ 
ernment,” “ church,” and “ education ”? So far as Euro¬ 
pean countries are concerned, the problem is usually be¬ 
tween “ government,” “ church,” and “ education.” But 
so far as the United States is concerned, the main point of 
the situation is missed unless the term “ state ” is also 
included. 

Even at the expense of a rather tedious discussion, let us 
address ourselves to the answer to the first question. How 
did this distinction between state, government, and the 
individual or community, and education develop in the 
United States, so that a situation quite different from that 
in England or on the Continent is to be found? 

No doubt it is chiefly due to the fact that for two and 
a half centuries the American colonies were accustomed 
to recognizing the sovereignty of the state existing in Eu¬ 
rope; that the government was immediately at hand; and 
that the community or the people and their interests were 
distinct from both and for the most part hostile to both. 
When the colonies or communities asserted their rights by 
revolution they assumed sovereignty and removed it from 
Europe to America. In the formulation of the American 


Paul Monroe 


7 1 

state the common sentiment revealed itself quite as hostile 
to government as it did to the remote European sovereignty. 

One of the earliest clear statements of these three major 
social factors to be found in Colonial documents is one 
from Virginia in the latter part of the seventeenth century. 
The situation described was typical of all of those settle¬ 
ments which were dominated by English sentiment and 
tradition. This document is that oft-quoted reply of Gov¬ 
ernor Berkeley of Virginia in 1671 to the inquiry from the 
Home Office. Such inquiries were made from time to time 
in the form of a questionnaire, a procedure more familiar 
in the present time in educational activities than in gov¬ 
ernmental. 

While this reply is very frequently quoted it is seldom 
quoted in full. The portion of the reply that bears on our 
present problem is usually omitted altogether, while the 
portion usually quoted leaves quite a wrong impression 
concerning conditions if these conditions are not examined 
outside of the document itself. The question asked in the 
Home Office inquiry was: “ What course is taken about in¬ 
structing the people within your government in the Chris¬ 
tian religion? ” The reply of Governor Berkeley was: 

The same course that is taken in England, out of town: every 
man according to his ability instructing his children. But I 
thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope 
we shall not have them in a hundred years: for learning has 
brought disobedience and heresy and sects in the world, and 
printing has divulged them and libels against the best of gov¬ 
ernments. God keep us from both. 

The first sentence of this reply, of especial significance 
for our discussion, is seldom noted, while the later sen¬ 
tences without interpretation have often been quoted to 
demonstrate the complete lack of appreciation of learning 
in the southern colonies. As a matter of fact, at about the 


72 Church, Community, State and Education 

time this document was written the testy governor was a 
contributor to the founding of a free school. So, indeed, 
were most of the other prominent citizens. So also did the 
legislature of the colony make similar pledge of support in 
contributions of tobacco. Whether this free school was 
ever actually in operation we have no means of determin¬ 
ing. But shortly afterwards others were. There had been 
some such schools in earlier years that had ceased to exist. 
It should be borne in mind also in explanation of the hos¬ 
tile attitude of the governor that this was at the period of 
the Stuart restoration which the government represented. 
And there was in progress in Virginia, it must be remem¬ 
bered, the so-called “ Bacon’s rebellion,” against the “ best 
of governments,” as the governor saw it, as well as against 
the established church. Hence the side remark hostile to 
free schools and to the printing press. These remarks were 
really aimed at conditions in England rather than at those 
in America, and were literally meant for “ home con¬ 
sumption.” 

The governor’s first sentence is the significant portion of 
this exposition, “ each according to his ability educating 
his children.” 

A series of laws extending throughout the colonial period 
supplemented the English individual system. Due to the 
system of indentured white servants there existed through¬ 
out the colonial period a large class of children either or¬ 
phaned or without responsible parents. For all such legal 
enactments required parents, guardians, or vestrymen of 
the parish to provide schooling or training. The vestry¬ 
men of the parish were civil as well as ecclesiastical officials. 
However, it was the parish as a civil unit with the power to 
tax that assumed the responsibility. 

In the New England colonies Massachusetts usually takes 
precedence, and is typical of the other colonies. Here in 


Paul Monroe 


73 

1642 was passed probably the first general school law of the 
colonies. As in the south, this law laid upon the individual 
family the responsibility of educating its own children both 
in learning, that is, in reading and writing, and in crafts¬ 
manship, that is, in employment. In case the parent neg¬ 
lected his duty the town must assume responsibility. In 
doing so all the families of the town were parceled out 
among the selectmen, the civil officers of the town. The 
first general school law in America was passed by Massa¬ 
chusetts some five years later, in 1647. The records of all 
the towns established before this date reveal that the law of 
1642 was being faithfully executed, and also that all of these 
towns in order to make operative the law of 1642 had ac¬ 
tually established schools before the law of 1647 was passed. 

In the central colonies the policy of Pennsylvania was 
typical. Here the colony passed to the various religious 
bodies, chiefly Quaker and various German sects, the re¬ 
sponsibility of educating the children both in learning and 
in occupation. While the procedure might be carried out 
as in New York by requirement that all school teachers be 
licensed by the governor, the general result was the same. 

Hence in all three groups of colonies we find the essential 
American principles early formulated and differentiated 
from those accepted in England. 

The first of these principles, the principle accepted in 
England, was that the primary responsibility for the edu¬ 
cation of the child rested on the parents or on the indi¬ 
vidual family. The second general principle was that the 
state assumed the ultimate responsibility for the general 
education of youth. This responsibility was assumed in 
the southern colonies by the vestrymen, who were repre¬ 
sentative both of the civil and of the ecclesiastical power; 
that is, the distinctions between state, government, church, 
and community were not clearly drawn, largely because the 


74 Church, Community, State and Education 

church was an established church identical with the gov¬ 
ernments; while the power of the community or of the state 
was not clearly differentiated from that of the sovereign 
power of the king as represented by the royal governor. 

In the New England colonies the actual authority was 
exercised by the town meeting which elected the selectmen 
who in turn carried out the provision of the colonial law. 
While membership in the town meeting was for a period 
limited to those who were members of the church, it was 
also provided by law that this limitation did not apply in 
school affairs, which were therefore affairs to be decided 
by the community as organized for this purpose. 

In the middle colonies the control of the schools was left 
to various religious sects as these corresponded to the vari¬ 
ous sections of the community. 

In all sections these principles thus emerged very early, 
though not always clearly. The major principle was later 
to emerge and dominate, namely, that the state as repre¬ 
senting all of the people was to control the education of 
the youth of the community, and that this control was not 
to be exercised by the government. 

However, during this early period this relationship was 
not clearly defined. The government was not clearly dif¬ 
ferentiated from the state as the latter was represented in 
the royal charter or in an appointed governor. Nor was 
the colonial legislature yet distinguished as a branch of gov¬ 
ernment either on the one hand from the royal power, or 
on the other hand from the sovereign power of the people. 
The Great and General Court of Massachusetts was at first 
composed of all freemen of the colony, and in time declared 
itself the sovereign power. Meanwhile, as it became impos¬ 
sible for the scattered freemen to meet, representative dele¬ 
gates were accepted and representative government thus 
came into existence. 


Paul Monroe 


75 

The following stage in the relationship of state, govern¬ 
ment, church, and education was most clearly and most 
early developed in Massachusetts. The development here 
can be taken as typical of the whole country, followed 
though perhaps slowly. The essential process was the as¬ 
signment of the control of education to the people directly. 
This was done through the establishment of local schools 
as independent units each under the control of the people 
who patronized the school. Thus control was exercised 
through the instrumentality of the school board, in time 
elected directly by the people. This was achieved through 
stages of evolution: first the control of the selectmen; then 
of a school committee; then of a school committee in which 
each member represented a school district; then of a per¬ 
missive district school system; then of a compulsory district 
school system, each school constituting a district with the 
power of constituting a district board, of taxation for the 
support of the school, of appointment of teacher, and so on. 

This system was made permissive just before the Ameri¬ 
can Revolution in 1768, and was made obligatory immedi¬ 
ately following the adoption of the Constitution in 1789. 
Though so great an authority as Horace Mann pronounced 
this act as the nadir of American education, the system did 
establish the direct control of the people over the schools, 
and clearly defined the state as the ultimate authority, and 
separated the government and the state in the thinking of 
the people respecting education. By making the school 
wholly and completely responsible to the will of the people, 
this system established education as the fundamental basis 
of democracy. By this procedure both government and 
church were eliminated from the control of schools. 

In time, during the nineteenth century, government as¬ 
sumed or was delegated certain powers respecting schools. 
These powers included the licensing of teachers, the ap- 


76 Church, Community, State and Education 

proval of textbooks, the inspection of schools, the distribu¬ 
tion of school funds which came from general funds or 
from commonwealth taxation. Such control was gained by 
means of the distribution of common school funds which 
were established in practically all commonwealths. These 
common school funds were in most cases established by con¬ 
stitutional provision, hence became acts of the state and not 
of the government. But the Constitution also usually 
placed on the school authority the duty of distributing the 
proceeds of common school funds, which leads to the power 
of inspection, usually in the hands of government school 
officials. 

In the middle states a system of rate bills grew up under 
these conditions. The inevitable question arose many 
times and in many places concerning the actual authority 
of these respective institutions as well as the question to 
what extent the state or the government should include 
the religious element in education. The question in its 
most direct legal form arose in connection with the dis¬ 
tribution of the common school funds: should such funds 
be allotted to sectarian or church schools? This question 
was fought out a number of times and in several places; 
particularly in the commonwealth of New York, once in 
the early part and once about the middle of the nineteenth 
century. This question was closely tied up with that of the 
establishment of free common schools involving the aboli¬ 
tion of the rate bill and the substitution of school support 
by direct taxation. The question was settled definitely 
about the middle of the century by the adoption of a con¬ 
stitutional provision which forbade the granting of any 
commonwealth funds for the support of any sectarian 
schools. This provision laid a definite restriction on both 
government and church. 

Elsewhere the question arose chiefly over the use of re- 


Paul Monroe 


77 

ligious matters in the curriculum. Many legal decisions 
have been made in different communities of the country. 
Most of these decisions approve the prohibition of all re¬ 
ligious instruction in the public schools. The most recent 
of such decisions made in the early part of the twentieth 
century in the commonwealth of California forbade the 
reading of the King James Version of the Bible as a sec¬ 
tarian exercise. As the reasoning in this decision would 
apply to any translation of the Bible, all religious instruc¬ 
tion is thus declared illegal. This decision undoubtedly is 
in harmony with both court decisions and with community 
sentiment in most regions of the country. On the other 
hand, one commonwealth, Mississippi, still definitely for¬ 
bids by constitution any legal limitation on the use of the 
Bible in the school. 

If any parent will bring legal action against such instruc¬ 
tion, where it exists, the general evidence is that the courts 
will universally rule against the inclusion of any such in¬ 
struction in the school program. In recent years, particu¬ 
larly during the twentieth century, there have been many 
cases in which the various religious denominations of the 
community have united on some common program of re¬ 
ligious instruction usually with provision for sectarian in¬ 
struction by the sect represented. Sometimes such a scheme 
is provided for by local commonwealth law; sometimes per¬ 
mitted where there is no local opposition; sometimes also 
existing on the basis of long-standing custom. But the 
major principle of complete separation of church and state 
and education has not been modified. 

The relation of the state, government, and schools is still 
further complicated in the United States by the fact that 
all municipal governments are chartered by and hence are 
controlled by legislature. However, the same principle ap¬ 
plies to the control of local school boards. In local or city 


78 Church, Community, State and Education 

school boards the members are in some cases appointed by 
the mayor, in some cases by the city council, in some few 
cases elected by the people directly; but in every case once 
elected or appointed they are independent of the appoint¬ 
ing power and in all cases represent the people directly; 
that is, represent the state and not the government. In 
Great Britain a school committee is a branch of the local 
municipal government. Not so in the United States. The 
local school board is an independent organ of the state, as is 
the local government itself. 

In the case of secondary education, such schools now 
exist practically universally as a part of common education. 
This principle was first settled by a Supreme Court ruling 
in the commonwealth of Michigan in 1877. In this deci¬ 
sion secondary education was declared a part of the com¬ 
mon school system. Early decisions in neighboring com¬ 
monwealths had declared such schools to be class schools, 
and hence forbidden under the Constitution. At present 
with the practical inclusion of most children of appropriate 
age in secondary public schools the question no longer 
arises. 

Most institutions of collegiate grade are under sectarian 
control or under the control of self-perpetuating boards 
that are assumed to represent the trust imposed upon them 
— to operate the institution in the interests of the state or 
of the local community which they represent. Universities 
are of this latter type, or are state institutions. The state 
universities exist in almost all of the commonwealths of the 
union: the term “ state ” in this connection means “ com¬ 
monwealth ” not state in distinction to government. Such 
institutions are controlled by boards of regents, the mem¬ 
bers of which may be appointed by the governor, may be 
selected by legislature, or may be elected by the people 
directly. 


Paul Monroe 


79 

In any circumstance the regents are not responsible to 
the appointing powers, but are responsible to the courts 
for the performance of the trust in the interests of the com¬ 
munity at large. In this respect their situation is identical 
with that of the members of the local school board. Here 
again the complete separation of the state, government, and 
church is evident, and has been guaranteed by legal deci¬ 
sion. The distinction between the power of the govern¬ 
ment and of the state was made in the famous Dartmouth 
College case in 1817. This was perhaps the most important 
single legal decision in the history of the country. Thus 
these principles have been worked out through historical 
evolution, though they were inherent in the early colonial 
situation before they became explicit. It is probable that 
the early colonial situation was responsible for the formula¬ 
tion of these principles, as is discussed earlier. 

The two and a half centuries of historical evolution pro¬ 
duced little change in these fundamental principles except 
a sharpening of the distinctions and a closer adaptation to 
local conditions. 

However, the present century with the profound changes 
brought about by the World War and the subsequent eco¬ 
nomic revolution has brought the proposal and at least 
the temporary acceptance of modification. Such modifica¬ 
tion if made permanent will involve a marked change in 
fundamental principles. 

The federal government has interfered in many ways 
with the process of education, thus taking control in these 
respects from the community and from the state. Some 
commonwealths, in economic stress, have made new alli¬ 
ances with the church in the support and hence ultimately 
in the control of education. In some respects the funda¬ 
mental theory of the American system, as it involves the 
distinction between state and government, the complete 


80 Church, Community, State and Education 

independence of church from both state and government, 
and the separation of government into three independent 
and noninterfering branches, executive, legislative, and 
judicial, is being attacked. Some forces undermining these 
principles have been at work over a period of years. What 
the outcome of this tendency will be no one can tell. Time 
alone will reveal the substantiality of these forces and the 
permanency of the changes. 

Throughout all of these changes from the situation ob¬ 
served in the early colonial period to the modifications of 
the third decade of the present century there has been an 
underlying as well as universal recognition of the right of 
the individual to decide the character of his own education 
or that of his children. Well in the twentieth century 
there occurred the Oregon referendum case. The people 
of Oregon adopted a constitutional amendment forbidding 
children the right of attending private or church schools 
during the period of compulsory education, that is until 
fourteen years of age. But the Supreme Court of the 
United States set aside this amendment as abridging the 
fundamental right of the individual as guaranteed by 
the Constitution of the United States. Thus the right of 
the individual to pursue his own conception of education is 
preserved. But the right of the church or any other body 
is preserved only as it in turn expresses the will of the state. 

Proposals are now before the legislature of several com¬ 
monwealths to subsidize from taxation sources certain ac¬ 
tivities of church schools such as payment for transporta¬ 
tion of children. But so far as the writer is aware no 
violation of the essential fundamental principles has been 
made. The major aspect of the new situation is that the 
federal government has interfered in undertaking many 
educational activities. Most of these involve the conflict 
of federal versus local government power over education. 


Paul Monroe 


81 


not the principle of government versus state. For the most 
part these modifications apply to novel educational situa¬ 
tions which have arisen out of the present abnormal con¬ 
ditions. It is too early yet to indulge in any generalization 
about this development. Of the many tendencies some de¬ 
veloped long before the present economic disturbances be¬ 
gan. When fully developed such modifications would 
throw the United States among those nations where edu¬ 
cation is controlled directly by the government. But a long 
time will be necessary to complete such a development. 
Even were this development completed, the United States 
would need to be classified with Australia and New Zealand 
as partaking of the character of both the continental type 
of education under government control and of the English 
type of individual education. 

The defense of this traditional American attitude, in¬ 
volving the separation of state, government, and church 
in the control of education and the assignment of the 
control of education to the state or the community, does 
not deny that recently there have developed serious 
consequences which call for consideration of the entire 
education procedure. Standards of conduct and behavior 
have been greatly modified. By many these changes are 
attributed to the very general elimination of the religious 
element from education. The chief query raised in 
rebuttal of this charge is, Why, then, are there similar 
changes in regard to moral conduct in those societies 
where the other conception of education prevails? 

It is also recognized that changes in economic and 
industrial life have produced very great social changes 
to which education has not yet made adequate adjust¬ 
ment. Occupational education has not kept abreast of 
changes in industry and in economic life. So there are 
a vast number of unemployed and even unemployable 


82 Church, Community, State and Education 

among the youth who have passed through the tradi¬ 
tional educational system. Novel social forces have 
developed which have great educational significance, rival 
the school in educational influence, and bid defiance to 
the conventional educational procedures. These novel 
forces are all outgrowths of new inventions — the radio, 
the cinema, and the automobile. It will be admitted that 
the system of education under direct government control, 
where decisions of universal application can be put into 
practice immediately, apparently have a more direct con¬ 
trol over and a wider use of these new forms of educa¬ 
tion than have the more individual systems of the tradi¬ 
tional type. 

These considerations but indicate that all educational 
systems face common problems which have not been 
solved by any one of the systems, and that modern life 
contains elements which may not yield to the traditional 
treatment. If this analysis proves to be the true one, then 
traditional education both in England and in the United 
States as well as in those of the first type may have to 
modify its standards and adjust itself to new conditions 
both to make use of the new technique and to control 
situations that have not existed hitherto. 

These principles which have been discussed are the 
products of the growth of American democracy. Obvi¬ 
ously they are quite different from those produced by 
the development of democracy in England. The insti¬ 
tutions as well as the theory and ideals of democracy are 
developed everywhere in response to local conditions and 
novel political forms. These characteristic principles de¬ 
veloped through the past may now be modified. 

But to date the American system constitutes the one 
clear example of the distinction between state and govern¬ 
ment, of the control of education by the state and not by 


Paul Monroe 


the government or by the community organized on a re¬ 
ligious basis, and of the relegation of the control of re¬ 
ligious beliefs and practices to the individual or to the 
community acting independently of all political organiza¬ 
tions. As such it lies midway between the continental 
European system, where education is controlled directly 
by the government, and England, where education is con¬ 
trolled largely by local community acting either as church 
or as local government, or as individuals, or as institutions 
such as universities or public schools. 

To have this system disappear in the stress of the new 
problems of the twentieth century would be a catastrophe 
similar to that of the disappearance of the political and 
economic principles of democracy. 












* 



















THE STATE AND VOLUNTARY 
EFFORT 

by 

C. R. Morris 





THE STATE AND VOLUNTARY EFFORT 


i 

The totalitarian states know exactly what they want 
to produce in their educational systems and give the 
whole energy of their educational machines to producing 
it. It is not easy to see what will be the effect of these 
single-minded efforts in the long run; but in the short 
run they seem able to produce results which are a triumph 
for modern organization and which leave the democ¬ 
racies, with their ideas of liberal education, seriously dis¬ 
quieted and in some respects jealous. Disquieted because 
the education, being directed to a spurious end, seems 
to us dangerous; jealous because it seems to be so effective 
in doing what it sets out to do. 

Nor can we satisfy ourselves with the easy comfort that 
education for a circumscribed idea produces results which 
are easier to see than those effected under the loftier 
democratic ideal of a liberal education. This is no doubt 
true; but we know it is not the whole truth. Our ambi¬ 
tious efforts are not only less effective in producing quick 
results than the more cut-and-dried enterprise of our 
totalitarian rivals; they are also less effective than they 
ought to be, taken for what they are. And we are being 
driven to inquire into our own education to see what 
is the matter with it. There are many things of course 
which the totalitarian philosophy allows, and indeed 
requires, its educators to do, where democratic faith 
requires us to do nothing. But are we doing all that we 
can do; are we doing all that we must do if democracy 

87 


88 Church, Community, State and Education 

and freedom are to survive? Many of us feel that we 
are not merely failing to stimulate in our people a spurious 
vigor which we can well do without; we are also failing 
to give scope for the proper encouragement of the natural 
and healthful vigor which a free people must have if 
it is to defend its freedom. 

Sir Michael Sadler has pointed out that “ a strong 
flavor of individualism ” has pervaded the well known 
definitions of a liberal education. Much thought has been 
given to the question of what such an education will do 
for the man who receives it, but little to the question 
of what it will enable him to do for the community to 
which he belongs. Little credit has been given to the 
community for the cultural influence it has exercised 
on the liberal education which has been given and 
received within its borders, and for the sacrifices it has 
made to maintain the institutions which made it possible. 
Nor have the needs of the community received much 
consideration. It has been assumed that whatever crea¬ 
tures are produced by a liberal education can be absorbed 
with benefit by the community at large. Educators need 
not consider the nature and needs of the society into which 
they were turning out their finished pupils; they should 
simply hitch their wagon to the star of absolutely liberal 
education and leave it at that. It is not surprising that so 
many “ liberally educated ” men became detached from 
the common lot, unduly fastidious, absorbed in rather 
selfish study and a little frightened by the rough-and- 
tumble of practical life. 

Many of these “ liberal ” theorists were Englishmen. It 
need not be said that English practice in education has 
never entirely conformed to this theory. It is commonly 
accepted that for a good part of the nineteenth century 
the English schools for the middle and upper classes pro- 


C. R. Morris 


89 

duced something that was wanted, socially and politically, 
though not of course all that was wanted. But the theory 
affected the practice, and in so far as thoughtful people 
helped to influence the tradition they for the most part 
pushed it in the direction of the theory. And, what is per¬ 
haps more serious, such elements in the practice of educa¬ 
tion as were not represented in the theory persisted or 
developed haphazard and without forethought; in so far 
as the education adapted itself to social conditions and 
social needs it did so through more or less opportunist 
adjustment by enterprising practical teachers, with a gift 
for small inventions in the trade and an eye for a situa¬ 
tion, whose underlying ideas about social needs and social 
conditions were those of the club or of the street — the 
ideas of men who were too busy getting on with the job 
to feel the need for any deep thought about the nature 
of society in general. Jowett, for instance, had his own 
ideas about what was socially, or imperially, wanted and 
those ideas, since he was a great practical educator, exer¬ 
cised an enormous influence on English education; but 
his thoughts about the essential nature and needs of hu¬ 
man society were neither inspired nor profound. In the 
realm of fundamental ideas he took from his world, he 
gave nothing to it. The same is true to a less degree of 
Arnold. In a word, education was developing itself as a 
rather competent professionalism, with a good deal of 
opportunism in meeting situations without real fore¬ 
thought, and covered by a partially spurious ideal of 
“ liberalism.” 

It is difficult even now for an educational enthusiast 
who has been brought up in a free country to bear too 
hardly upon this “ liberal ” ideal. No doubt it lived in 
a fool’s paradise in thinking that, if you look after the 
individual, society will look after itself. But the educator 


go Church, Community, State and Education 

ought to keep one eye on the infinite; and there is some¬ 
thing noble about a vision which sees no need to com¬ 
promise with practical social difficulties, but simply asks 
itself, “ What was the individual intended to be? ” and 
then tries to turn him into that. This is education in 
the grand manner; and where its principle is accepted 
great power falls into the hands of those educators 
who are looking to the future generation — which at least 
is better than letting it all rest with those whose whole 
attention is given to the problem of surviving by hook 
or by crook until tomorrow, of not being utterly crushed 
by the wreckage of today. Any education which has not 
more than a touch of this grand manner does not deserve 
the name, and must prove a delusion to those who trust 
in it. 

But the problems which have not been thought out 
by the classical definers of a liberal education must be 
thought out, and soon. The ideal of traditional liberalism 
does not as it stands command acceptance today; and 
unless it is reborn, its place will be taken everywhere by 
pseudo-ideals such as the true educator must always 
disown, since they involve the prostitution of that whose 
value is infinite by using it as a means to the convenient 
overcoming of ephemeral difficulties. The defense of 
democracy calls for a vindication of the common-sense 
thesis that education can be liberal in every sense that 
matters without being individualistic to the point of 
being dangerously antisocial, and that it is possible to 
serve absolute values without remaining in a fool’s para¬ 
dise about the conditions and needs of actual society. 

Some have been tempted to think that the case can 
be met by simple changes of technique in our educational 
system. They urge that we turn out pupils who have 
been given no information about the social and political 


C. R. Morris 


9 i 

system in which they will live, and that an appreciation 
of the finer points of a Greek or English lyric, or an 
ability to manipulate differential equations, is not a satis¬ 
factory substitute for such information. Not unlike those 
who have set unbounded store by the dissemination 
among young children of knowledge of the physical facts 
of sexual reproduction, they fly to the hope that by 
including some lessons on the social sciences in the curric¬ 
ulum of all our schools they will turn out a generation 
of young men and women who will have so firm a hold 
on true values in all the important affairs of life that 
they will effectively defend democracy — they will be 
unable to be seduced from the service of free institutions, 
and will show that vigor and determination in collective 
action which at present we unhappily associate not with 
the children of light but with the forces of darkness. Our 
curriculum has been too narrow, they say, and our 
teachers have been too academic. Let every boy and 
girl be taught in the schools to understand the basic 
social and political problems of their time and country, 
and let them as far as possible be initiated into these 
studies by men and women who know something of social 
and political life at first hand. Then they will be trained 
to pull their own weight as citizens and militant members 
of the good society, and apathy, irresponsible fractious¬ 
ness and collective inaction will be no more. 

It is clear that those who make this point are so far 
in the right that the curriculum must certainly be 
broadened in this sense. But it would be a delusion to 
suppose that such a change would go to the root of the 
matter and would solve the problem. Even if his atten¬ 
tion is directed to the most urgent problems of the day, 
and even if a Napoleon or a Lenin himself be his mentor, 
it is impossible to escape the fundamental law that the 


92 Church, Community, State and Education 

pupil will only learn what he is capable of learning, what 
his own experience enables him to learn. The educator 
who hopes that Etonians or Wykehamists will acquire a 
juster appreciation of our social system from listening 
to a William Booth or a Keir Hardie than from being 
taught by a research sociologist will too often be dis¬ 
appointed. So long as the pupil has experience of no more 
than one kind of people, he may learn to remember 
external facts about other kinds of people, but no more. 
Let us not delude ourselves with a priori hopes. No great 
man is a hero to his valet, said the philosopher, not 
because the great man is not a great man, but because 
the valet is a valet. And the crude fact is that so long 
as a schoolboy remains a schoolboy he will probably 
get less insight into the working of parliamentary insti¬ 
tutions by listening to a prime minister than he will gain 
from any competent schoolmaster. 

What we want in the next generation, and what our 
present educational system is not giving us in sufficient 
measure, is vigor — a capacity to live together without 
losing enthusiasms and to act together with power in 
attacking vital problems and defending vital values. And 
in this age when the social conscience is so sensitive, and 
when there is so acute and troubling an awareness of 
impending political catastrophe, our education with all 
its liberality is not producing that vigor. It is clear that 
something more than a simple extension of the curricu¬ 
lum is required to produce it. 

The simple way, of course, to meet the case is the 
totalitarian way: give to youth a clear and unquestioned 
objective, which shall as far as possible be a form without 
content but tricked out to look thoroughly concrete, and 
use for all it is worth the powerful apparatus which 
modern science has contributed to the educator’s armory 


C. R. Morris 


93 

to canalize all the emotional forces in the individual so 
as to produce collective action in pursuit of that objective. 
This can be done, and it is being done in some parts 
of Europe. Educationally there is nothing in principle 
new about it. It has been done before in Japan; the 
Jesuits have done it and a hundred others. We perhaps 
understand in theory a little more than we did how those 
gifted people who run such “ educational ” institutions 
manage to do it; but it is doubtful how far such increased 
theoretic understanding really affects or assists the prac¬ 
tice of the gifted people in question. What modem scien¬ 
tific knowledge has done is vastly to extend the range 
of action of a few gifted persons. The totalitarians can 
perhaps do little more — it is hardly possible to do more 
than has been done in the past — with the relatively small 
band of elite, on which they ultimately rely; but they 
can do far more, thanks to broadcasting and the press, 
with the great mass of the people. This undoubtedly 
means that a few suitably gifted persons, if they serve 
antidemocratic, antiliberal ends, can be far more dan¬ 
gerous to the survival of freedom in the world at large 
than they have ever been before. Just as the invention 
of the tank, the armored car, and the airplane has 
enormously increased the possibilities of controlling the 
whole population by physical force through a small elite, 
so, to come nearer to the life of the spirit, the develop¬ 
ment of propaganda has made the many almost defense¬ 
less before the few. And hence democracy is challenged 
in defense of her life to find and cultivate springs of 
vigor in her free people which shall enable her if necessary 
to resist the quasi-fanatical energy of totalitarianism. 

The trouble is that while a good deal has been known 
for a long time about the craft of propaganda, very little 
is still known about the mystery of education. The scrupu- 


94 Church, Community, State and Education 

lous educator knows all about the tricks of the hypnotist 
and of other unscrupulous exploiters of human instru¬ 
ments; in many cases he could, if he wished, perform 
the tricks himself. But except in the very best material 
he cannot generate as much sheer active efficiency in 
properly educated persons. And bound as he is to treat 
all human beings as worthy of a proper education, in 
so far as he can give it he puts the society in which he 
serves at a short-run disadvantage as against other com¬ 
munities whose teachers accept a different faith. In his 
attempts to solve his problem he has sometimes resorted 
to a training of the free intellect which has too often 
starved the emotions and paralyzed action, and some¬ 
times has cultivated the emotions, still with a respect for 
the demands of freedom, only to produce a kind of 
romantic anarchy. And now while he is still attempting 
to find the true solution, the liberal educator finds that 
his world bids fair to be brought about his head in ruins 
through the short-run potency of the methods of rivals 
who have no respect or care for the mystery of education 
at all. 

But let us return to the main issue. If we could accept 
totalitarianism, or something like it, we could solve our 
problem. If the state made up its mind what its citizens 
were to be taught to believe, what values they were to 
be taught to have at heart, then a people prepared to 
move vigorously in the given direction could perhaps 
be produced — or at least our educators would know how 
to set to work, even if it meant undoing the effects of 
generations of free institutions in the past. But if the 
state may not use its educational system to hypnotize 
its citizens and stimulate their emotional responses all 
in one direction, what can the educator do? There seems 
to be general agreement, in the light of past experience. 


C. R. Morris 


95 

that it is not enough in these days to cultivate the free 
intellect and to leave the education of the emotions to 
look after itself. The schools used to be able to confine 
their attention to the intellect without harm in an age 
when a certain stability and uniformity in the life and 
enthusiasms of the people could be taken for granted. 
So long as the general direction of a man’s life could 
be taken purely as given, intellectual cultivation could 
do him little harm and normally did him much good. 
But in an age when a boy or girl on leaving school or 
university is going out into a world in which there is 
no strong current of religious, moral, social, or political 
orthodoxy — a world of “ emancipated ” persons who 
mostly feel bewildered in their largely unwanted free¬ 
dom, like sheep without a shepherd — then the whole case 
is very different. Then the main problem for the educator 
is not to train the intellect as an instrument, and perhaps 
to cultivate and liberalize a rough people with the crude 
energy and drive of pioneers: his chief task is rather to 
help every free man to find for himself a cause to which 
he can really devote himself, and meanwhile to help him 
to train himself for what will one day be a strenuous 
life endeavor needing all the emotional drive that there 
is in human nature. 

Some liberal educators still hope that it is possible to 
find a technique for doing this without determining the 
direction in which the drive shall go; that just as it seems 
possible up to a point to train the intellect as an instru¬ 
ment without knowing to what uses it will be put, so 
it should prove feasible to develop and keep at high 
efficiency a kind of emotional power unit in the indi¬ 
vidual, which shall be there to give powerful service when 
called upon. But experience seems to belie this hope. 
The principle involved is not today very widely accepted 


96 Church, Community, State and Education 

in its application to intellectual training; and as applied 
to the emotional nature it has perhaps never seemed 
very plausible except to a few extreme romantics. 

The alternative, if we follow the orthodox political 
principles of practical liberalism in England, would be 
to allow free play to voluntary associations in stimulating 
the active enthusiasms of people, even of young people; 
and for the educational system to accept these enthu¬ 
siasms as given, to come to terms with them and to lend 
itself not to their frustration or discouragement, but to 
the training of the young for the pursuit of their enthu¬ 
siasms with active efficiency, vigor and common sense. 
This would mean that the educator would not embrace 
that negative and spurious liberalism which too often 
produces in the pupil merely an excessive detachment 
and a total inability to be fired by a generous enthusiasm; 
he would rather welcome a sense of vocation where he 
found it and would take account of it in the training of 
the pupil’s mind and character. No doubt this would 
mean a certain predestination of the individual; the boy 
would put his hand early to a plough and his education 
would help to make it unlikely that he would turn back. 
But if all went well, he would, in addition to acquiring 
an appropriate skill, be accumulating energy and learning 
confidence in his own power; and he would be content 
in the discovery that it is a clear way to the living of a 
full life to cooperate with other like-minded people in 
the service of a cause. Moreover, under such conditions 
the capacity to make things go well in the educational 
scheme would not demand more than human ability; 
it would be well within the power of the educators of 
today to fulfill the task required. 

It may appear to some that to take this course would 
be to acquiesce in all that matters in the underlying thesis 


C. R. Morris 


97 

of the totalitarian state. If it is agreed that the whole 
of education should be through and through imbued with 
the ideal of training for the service of some end, what 
more can the totalitarian himself demand? If the indi¬ 
vidual is to devote himself body and soul to cooperation 
in some movement or group, and education is simply 
to enable him to do this more efficiently and thoroughly, 
what is there left for the liberal to live for? It will matter 
to him very little in that case whether there are many 
groups or few, or whether the whole nation is gathered 
up into one all-embracing totalitarian movement. As 
far as the life of the spirit is concerned, the tyranny of a 
small group over the individual can be as deadly as that 
of a large. In any such society freedom must be dead. 

But surely to argue thus would be absurd. There is 
absolute validity in the liberal claim that the vigor and 
spontaneity of the individual must not be swamped in 
the vigor of the group. Any society which does not 
conform to this principle, whatever its professed aims 
may be, is in fact defeating the very end which societies 
exist to serve. But no individual can live in complete 
and utter solitariness, even of the spirit. In the supposedly 
individualistic ages of the past, single persons lived much 
less self-dependent lives than they thought they did, or 
than some historians have allowed; and no thoughtful 
person wishes to live without some sense of solidarity 
with others of his kind. No doubt in the highest type 
of religious society there seems to be an almost complete 
absence of group interference in the terrestrial activities 
of members of the society. The solidarity is the solidarity 
of a communion of saints or of a city of God, not of a 
regiment of soldiers. But the society is there, and the 
sense of communion it gives; and the life of the spirit 
cannot be lived without it. 


98 Church, Community, State and Education 

The real question is not whether there are to be 
societies and communions, but what kind of societies 
and communions there are to be. Where there is freedom 
there will always be some societies which leave to their 
members the fullest individual enterprise and sponta¬ 
neity of which human beings are capable. There will 
also be many associations and organizations where mem¬ 
bers need a closer orthodoxy and a tighter discipline. 
In the totalitarian state there is only one organization 
with a full orthodoxy and an almost infinite discipline. 
In our revulsion against this extreme, we must not forget 
that real isolation from others is not spiritual life but 
spiritual death; and that freedom to work with others 
in a self-chosen cause is the most priceless freedom man 
can have. This does not mean that every man who is 
spiritually alive must be enrolled in the membership of 
some social or political organization, and must give three 
evenings a week to fighting its good fight. But it does 
mean that the man who does not feel some sense of 
solidarity and spiritual alliance with some other people 
or groups of people is spiritually lost. 

Surely the ideal society is not one in which individuals 
are as far as possible so completely insulated from one 
another that each can manifest a pure and unadulterated 
activity of his own, but one in which societies and asso¬ 
ciations are allowed to find their own level, and so can 
have a fair chance really to satisfy the needs of their 
members. Not all such societies will do battle for some 
tangible end or promulgate some clearly articulated 
doctrine; and the bonds which maintain the unity of 
some will be light as compared with those of others. 
But the educator who has the needs of the good society 
in mind will wish to favor the growth of particular 
solidarities where he can, since it is out of such soli- 


C. R. Morris 


99 

darities that there springs effective and persistent action 
and vigorous living. 

The totalitarian has partially recognized this truth, 
only he has not scrupled to drive the whole nation into 
one vast solidarity — the solidarity of the race or nation. 
Nothing could be further from the ideal of allowing 
societies and groups to find their own level; nothing 
would be less like the form of society outlined above. 
But where totalitarianism has gone wrong in the eyes 
of the liberal is not in denying that man is in spirit a 
completely isolated individual, not in recognizing that 
ultimately man must live in some association with his 
fellows, but in claiming to merge every individual life 
into one great association, whose ends and means are 
through and through beyond the control of the individual 
will. This compulsory driving of everyone into one rigidly 
organized group, which controls him body and soul, means 
the death of any true freedom. It is this which is the real 
enemy of the spirit of liberalism, and which must be fought 
to the end. 

The encouragement of association and of cooperative 
acting and living under free conditions is an entirely 
different matter, and as supporters of the liberal ideal 
we need not regret it or apologize for it. The fact that 
there are in the community zealots of many kinds, and not 
only of one kind, in itself makes a great deal of difference 
to the education in each kind. Under these circumstances 
we have to train ourselves to work for our appointed end 
within a society in which other groups of people are work¬ 
ing for other ends. We shall not train ourselves as if we 
could take it for granted that our own group was the only 
pebble on the beach; we shall have to respect the rights of 
other groups. And though our zealots will nonetheless 
have a purpose in life and will be prepared to make the 


ioo Church, Community, State and Education 

greatest sacrifices for it, it will be part of their purpose 
that they should achieve their end within a free society. 
And this will affect the whole education through and 
through. The whole training of a zealot for a free associa¬ 
tion within a free society will be utterly different from the 
training of a totalitarian zealot. And yet there is no reason 
why the training of the former should leave him less vig¬ 
orous or less full of missionary fire than the latter; though 
no doubt his proper education is a more difficult thing 
to achieve. 

But what of the state? Will not this training of sectional 
zealots, breathing fire each for his own cause, make of 
the community as a whole nothing but a bear garden? 
Shall we have got rid of our rather vigorless apathy only 
to tear society apart with the internecine struggles of 
warring groups? I think not. In educational matters 
we must show a little faith; and a little faith in this direc¬ 
tion is not ill-grounded. Even in these chaotic times since 
the War experience seems to have shown that the unity of 
our national groupings takes a good deal of tearing 
asunder; and we seem to be faced by the prospect of a 
world in which the state of international affairs will make 
us all take it for granted for many generations to come that 
the interests and security of our nation must come first. 
Moreover, it seems that the great educational systems to¬ 
day have the secret of implanting an implicit loyalty to 
the nation, an implicit conviction, which will come to the 
surface in appropriate circumstances, that the interests of 
the nation must be paramount. Indeed, the fear is that, 
even outside the totalitarian states, the power of our edu¬ 
cation in this direction is not too weak but too strong. 
The very real forces which might have united international 
groups — Roman Catholics, for instance, or the workers 
of the world — and induced them to break up nation- 


C. R. Morris 


101 


alisms, have so far proved almost powerless against our 
existing education. We need not therefore allow our¬ 
selves to become the prey to an unnecessary hysterical fear 
that we shall inevitably swing to an opposite extreme with 
sudden violence. All our history is against it. Our educa¬ 
tion has the secret of implanting this implicit loyalty to 
the nation; and let us recognize this fact and use it for 
what it is worth. It is better for the loyalty to be implicit. 
So long as it remains so there is far less danger of its being 
bound up with some static idea — such as Aryanism — or 
worse still of being cast into the mold of loyalty to a particu¬ 
lar person or government than is the case with an explicit 
loyalty, carefully fostered and inflamed with nation-wide 
song and dance. And yet in a vigorous people it is strong 
enough and reliable enough, when brought to the surface 
by an appropriate emergency, to meet every need. 

In a vigorous people, the trouble is that in our anxiety 
to guard freedom, and liberalism in education, we have 
let the methods of our schools and universities enervate 
and emasculate our youth as far as their potency for social 
action is concerned. We have been afraid of encouraging 
zealotry in particular groups, fearing both for freedom and 
for national unity. This was surely a mistake. A vigorous 
people will transfer the vigor of its ordinary living to its 
defense of national values when it is required to turn and 
defend them. On the other hand a people that is disillu¬ 
sioned and frustrated in its ordinary living will keep its 
disillusionment and frustration in all spheres and at all 
times. Let us then be always in our education inspired by 
the guiding notion that every pupil is being trained to use 
to the full his powers as a zealot for something. There 
need be no derogation in principle from freedom. A man 
or a boy is not the less free because we remind him that 
if his education is to be properly planned he must put his 


102 Church, Community, State and Education 

hand to some plough. If, as in the totalitarian states, only 
one plough is offered him, then any talk of liberty is indeed 
an illusion. But no thoughtful man asks for freedom to be 
nothing and to do nothing. Yet in educating we have 
perhaps behaved as if men were like that, or the next 
thing to that — that is, unwilling or perhaps unable to 
make up their minds. We have in effect said to our pupils, 
“ Never mind, do not worry to commit yourselves yet; 
take your time; and in the meantime we will get on with 
training your capacities so that when you do make up your 
mind, when you do give yourself entirely to the service of 
some cause, you will find all your faculties and abilities 
developed, and you will have all the power of which you 
are capable immediately available for that service! ” All 
this we have done in the service of liberalism in education, 
and we have waited for experience to teach us that such an 
education will not do. We ought perhaps to have known 
it all along. 

And yet it was a natural mistake to make. It was inevi¬ 
table that the state should accept the responsibility for edu¬ 
cating its citizens, and it has certainly done so once and 
for all. About that there can be no going back. And 
granted that a state accepted the liberal principle of toler¬ 
ance, of respect for the freedom of the spirit, what was it 
to do? If it must decline to exploit its powerful position 
as educator to force its young citizens into a spiritual mold 
determined by itself, what could it do except look for an 
education which would train mere abilities, without giving 
any bias toward any one direction rather than any other 
for their exercise? And having imposed this self-denying 
ordinance upon itself, what more natural than that it 
should use its position to push churches and other groups 
in the same direction, so far as they would allow themselves 
to be pushed. Nor need we accuse the state too vehe¬ 
mently of being a dog in the manger. It is rather that it 


C. R. Morris 


103 

accepted this pseudo-liberal idea as an ideal and made itself 
its prophet. 

Since we are now satisfied from experience that what 
this idea enjoins us to do undoubtedly turns out ill, we 
may well set ourselves to do some thinking which we ought 
to have done before. Let us see whether the state cannot 
lend its educational system for the training of zealots of all 
sorts and kinds, confident that the state itself will ulti¬ 
mately reap all necessary benefit — that the vigor and 
power which is given in ordinary living to the service of 
other causes will return home to a unified defense of the 
state when a true need arises. Let us have the courage of 
our convictions and show a little faith. Let us give up the 
notion that liberal training must be training for nothing 
in particular. If a group of people want to devote them¬ 
selves to some cause, let us give up talking about detach¬ 
ment and impartiality and give them the services of our 
educational system to enable them to equip themselves for 
their task and learn to do it well and truly. If we care to 
look at the facts, we can assure ourselves that we dare go 
a long way in this direction without much risk. With the 
help of history and tradition our educators, almost without 
noticing it, drive home into the young a deep sense of 
national unity which has power and to spare for resisting 
disruption; and we live in a world in which this sense of 
national unity is everywhere too strong, not too weak. We 
may safely have the courage to use our schools and univer¬ 
sities to develop vigor rather than to frustrate it, even 
though the ends which that vigor will be used to serve 
may be “ sectional ” in times of ordinary living. We can 
rely on that vigor’s coming home to the service of the na¬ 
tion at any time when nationalism ought to be served. 

This will seem to many to be an almost unbelievably 
idealistic and impractical suggestion, such as would come 
only from one who has lived his life in the cloistered seclu- 


104 Church, Community, State and Education 

sion of a British university. And to those who think thus 
it will not be easy to find a convincing reply. But it is by 
no means certain that they think rightly. Claiming to read 
correctly the signs of the times, they argue that freedom 
for zealotry will eventually bring into existence zealots 
who will destroy the freedom. Those who believe in the 
abolition of free institutions, they say, will use the license 
given to them to promulgate their subversive views, until 
they become strong enough to liquidate the free institu¬ 
tions which gave them their chance. They will exploit 
the very virtues of the democrat for his own destruction, 
and when he falls the victim of his own high-mindedness 
they will despise him for an innocent and idealistic fool. 

This is not the place to embark upon a long argument 
on this point, though it would raise questions both of 
method and of value which are of fundamental impor¬ 
tance. But it is necessary to say enough to show that the 
issue is not shirked. There is clearly no reason of principle 
why the liberal should allow those who believe in the 
destruction of free institutions to drill and arm themselves 
and to organize a powerful fighting machine. It is freedom 
of speech and freedom of association which he is pledged 
to defend. No doubt, too, democracy is liable to the in¬ 
herent disease of indecision and weakness of will in the 
handling of illiberal minorities until it is too late. But 
no great height can be reached without risk, and no man or 
society is without human weaknesses. These difficulties 
must be courageously faced and shown to be capable of 
being overcome. No nation which has known anything at 
all of the life of freedom has been induced to turn from 
it except in a time of the extremest despair; and no nation 
which has really got to know and love such a life in its 
very bones has yet been induced to turn from it at all. 

Above all, wherever there is a chance of a reasonably 


C. R. Morris 


105 

cool and calm appeal to reason, it has yet to be shown 
that free institutions have anything to fear. No one would 
welcome practical totalitarianism if it dropped out of a 
clear sky. The ideal of personal freedom is a noble ideal, 
worth taking risks for. If once it could be dissociated from 
the charge of normally leading to the sort of dilatory gov¬ 
ernment which is a stronghold for the indiscriminate de¬ 
fense of the status quo, it would stand forth without chal¬ 
lenge in the eyes of all as the noblest social ideal there is — 
far more satisfying than any materialistic aim whatever, 
however altruistic or equalitarian it may be. It is an ideal 
that owes a great deal to Christianity, and it must com¬ 
mand the allegiance of any Christian, if once he can be 
satisfied that it is practical politics. And it is on this 
ground that it must stand. Unless we have the faith and 
courage to maintain it there, we shall be unworthy de¬ 
fenders, because it will not be free institutions that we are 
defending. 

In the end freedom will only be loved and defended 
by those who use it. The man who, though he is free to 
work for any cause he wills, does not in practice care for any¬ 
thing sufficiently to work for it with any enthusiasm, will 
at a pinch prove but a poor champion of a liberty which 
has never really meant anything to him. The best thing 
our educational system can do to defend democracy is to 
turn out men and women who really enjoy and care for 
that vigorous individual life and work which would not 
be allowed to them under a totalitarian system. And this 
is what at present our democratic schools and universities 
are largely failing to do. 


11 

It is not easy to see what practical conclusions should 
be drawn from these principles, and it would be foolish 


106 Church, Community, State and Education 

here to attempt to give more than tentative suggestions. 
One thing, however, is certain: we should not conclude 
that education, in any part of it, should cease to be the 
care of the state. The state has the greatest duty to edu¬ 
cate, and it is itself the chief beneficiary when that duty 
is performed. Again, it seems to be almost certain that we 
should not conclude that all schools should be sectional 
schools, each training pupils of one kind to serve one pur¬ 
pose in life. Europe is not likely at this date to give up the 
idea of a “ university and the same principles apply not 
only to the instruction of those of maturer years but to edu¬ 
cation at any stage. Education in a segregated order may 
gain something in intensity of vocation; but it loses more in 
appreciation and understanding of human nature, apart 
from the serious practical disadvantage of missing an op¬ 
portunity for full acclimatization to the ethos of the par¬ 
ticular society in which the pupils will have to serve. 

It seems to be the least that the state may reasonably de¬ 
mand, that every school and college should be sufficiently 
broadly based as regards the origins from which its mem¬ 
bers spring that every boy and girl in the course of the 
ordinary living of school life may acquire a natural sensi¬ 
tivity to the whole range of types and interests that are to 
be found within the community. Experience seems to 
show conclusively that where this is not so, nothing can 
repair the harm both of omission and commission that re¬ 
sults; no arrangement of curriculum, no teaching tech¬ 
nique can give to the child or young man what he should 
be breathing in with every breath that he draws in his 
school life. To fail to give to children these conditions is 
to deceive them vitally during their impressionable years 
about the nature of the world in which they will have to 
live. 

If this is accepted, it is clear that it is very difficult to 


C. R. Morris 


107 

see how we are in practice to apply the general principles 
at which we have arrived above. If we are not to encourage 
the isolation of people of a particular kind or with a partic¬ 
ular vocation, how are we to see to it that education shall 
encourage and empower, rather than discourage and frus¬ 
trate, particular enthusiasms and particular vocations? 

Prima facie there seem to be two kinds of experience 
above all upon which it is worth while to reflect in trying 
to find out what is and what is not practicable within 
the limits of a liberal system — the experience of our uni¬ 
versities and the contribution to national education of our 
system of non-provided schools. 

Let us consider these in the other order. At first sight 
it might seem that the natural way of trying to apply the 
principles we have advocated would be to multiply the 
provision of non-provided schools, following the main lines 
of such development in the past. In this way it might 
seem that voluntary associations of a suitable character 
could make their contribution to the spiritual vitality of 
the youth of the nation by arranging for the education 
together of those who have some common ideal or faith, 
and thereby promoting that solidarity and confident con¬ 
sciousness of common purpose which can make the average 
individual show so much more heroism and determina¬ 
tion than he could ever do if he stood alone. But on re¬ 
flection it is clear that the non-provided school does not 
offer the solution to this particular problem. 

In the first place it must be clearly emphasized that 
anything like the existing establishment of non-provided 
schools in England does not cover what is today the vital 
ground. Today the living issues are different from what 
they were before the War. It must be remembered that 
we are concerned primarily not with those questions dif¬ 
ferences of opinion about which are ultimately the most 


108 Church, Community, State and Education 

important sub specie aeternitatis, but with those where 
differences are felt in the community at large to be vital 
and fundamental. It is here that the “ liberal ” system, 
as we have experienced it, so effectively operates to cause 
the issues to be shirked and to prevent any teacher from 
giving real light and leading or from promoting any full- 
blooded and well directed enthusiasm. 

Today, owing to the rapidly growing sensitiveness of the 
public mind to social and political evils, the thing that 
really stirs passions in religious teaching, as in history teach¬ 
ing, is the bearing of what is taught on man’s whole attitude 
to social evils and to the problems of war and international 
justice. Has Christianity a social teaching and a teaching 
about war? Or is true Christian doctrine teachable in 
terms which exhibit it as having no clear bearing on these 
issues, so that the individual must think out its application 
for himself? Or, if Christianity has a teaching on these 
points, what is it? Again, where exactly does legitimate 
defense of the Christian faith against the anti-Christianism 
of Bolshevism become in effect preaching against the legiti¬ 
mate aspirations of the working class movement? And so 
on. These are all questions upon which the reasonable 
man will expect to find serious differences of opinion, and 
these are the questions which stir passionate emotions in 
the community; these in a word are the issues upon which 
“ liberal ” principles are most sure to drive us into a shirk¬ 
ing of the issues during the years of education and a conse¬ 
quent atrophy in the real life of the spirit. 

Any member of an education committee knows that in 
these days for every one protest against a piece of teaching 
on a point of “ pure ” doctrine or “ pure ” ethics, there are 
ten against religious or historical teaching which appears 
to have clear implications about a social issue or about the 
questions of war. We are not a nation of very good Chris- 


C. R. Morris 


109 

tians; but we are a Christian-minded people. Ideologically 
we are all within the Christian fold, and we pose our issues 
and promulgate our conclusions in Christian terms. It is 
within our religious education that our living issues arise 
today, not in a battle between Christianity and atheism, or 
Christianity and anything else. What is more, they do not 
lie between confession and confession, but within the re¬ 
ligious teaching of the various confessions. 

Thus the alignment of the establishment of the confes¬ 
sional non-provided schools does not correspond to what 
from our point of view are the vital matters of the day. But 
this is not all. It seems, to say the least of it, doubtful 
whether any realignment would meet the situation — that 
is, whether any expedient of this general kind can satisfac¬ 
torily meet the situation. Against the non-provided school 
as such I have nothing to say. The arguments in favor of 
allowing its existence under certain conditions and for cer¬ 
tain purposes are no doubt strong. But it seems unthink¬ 
able that the establishment of such schools could be devel¬ 
oped to meet the particular needs with which we are here 
concerned. This whole expedient is surely admissible 
only where the conditions in the community as regards rele¬ 
vant matters of faith allow the principle involved to be re¬ 
stricted in its application within very moderate limits. It 
is one thing to have chains of non-provided schools under 
the aegis of four or five confessions; it would be quite an¬ 
other to allow them to grow up under the auspices of any 
body or association which was enthusiastic enough to pro¬ 
mulgate particular views about the proper education of 
youth. 

In actual practice, if such associations had to back their 
enthusiasms by raising substantial sums of money in order 
to pay a considerable proportion of the cost of the schools, 
few of them would seriously enter the field and the prob- 


no Church, Community, State and Education 

lem would not be met; if on the other hand the state showed 
itself so favorable to non-provided schools that it bore al¬ 
most the whole of their cost, the various voluntary bodies 
would leap into the field and would surely produce chaos. 
Thus it seems difficult to believe either that the system of 
non-provided schools as at present existing does much to 
mitigate the essential weaknesses of the “ liberal ” tradition 
in education, or that an extension of the application of the 
principle could do much more. 

We may now turn to consider the other kind of experi¬ 
ence which was mentioned above as worth examining for 
our purpose. Do the methods of our universities suggest 
lines along which a solution of our problem may be sought 
in our schools? 

Many critics will no doubt hold that our universities are 
subject to the same paralysis as infects all modern “ liberal ” 
education at all its stages; that here, too, is the same fear of 
allowing anyone, whether professor or student, to develop 
any strong conviction which is not shared by everyone else 
in the community, or to train himself for an effective life of 
service of any particular ideal. Unfortunately there is too 
much evidence in support of this view. But it may fairly 
be claimed that, even within the limits of principles and ex¬ 
pedients well established in experience, the outlook in lib¬ 
eral universities is not without hope. In the case of young 
men and women of university age it is not beyond the ca¬ 
pacity of the liberal educator’s art to encourage a real sense 
of vocation and a real spiritual vigor without incurring 
much danger of falling into the totalitarian pit of propa¬ 
ganda, or anything like it — and this without recourse to 
the expedient of sectarian colleges. At university age it is 
perhaps possible to approach the liberal ideal of providing 
the young with the equipment, and of developing in them 
the determination, to go ahead with energy along their own 


C. R. Morris 


i 11 


road without dictating to them what that road shall be. 
Even while the university remains a true university, in the 
fullest and most liberal sense of the word, much can be 
done to arrest that spiritual vigorlessness which, if we are 
right, has too generally been the product of the conscien¬ 
tious application in educational practice of liberal prin¬ 
ciples. 

This is partly because in university education at its best 
more use can be made of personal contact in the proper 
sense — that is, real unrestricted intercourse and commun¬ 
ion between individual and individual; and partly because 
the greater maturity of the students makes it possible to 
allow far more freedom to university teachers than is pos¬ 
sible with those who teach young children — freedom 
to express their own faiths, live their lives in the serv¬ 
ice of their own ideals, and thereby show themselves to 
be persons of strong conviction and vigor in the serv¬ 
ice of their convictions — and so to influence their pu¬ 
pils by example. All this is recognized in practice. Very 
few people are disquieted when they find the universities 
turning out zealots of unorthodox views, and on the whole 
the universities are showing some capacity to survive and 
even encourage a constantly rising temperature in student 
life, a constant tendency for undergraduates to be infected 
with a growing impatience to get to work in the world at 
large for the promotion of some cause which they hold to 
be good. If this is a good thing the universities have a long 
way to go before they will realize their full potentialities; 
but at least it is clear that in this sphere something can be 
done. The universities can, if they wish, contribute to the 
task of educating a strenuous youth without violating any¬ 
thing essential in liberal principles. 

The same secret can be extended to adult education, and 
here too the state has already shown itself willing to go a 


112 Church, Community, State and Education 

long way. Working class adult education in England has 
been rendered possible only by the willingness of the state 
to provide classes for a particular section of the community 
on terms which in many essentials were laid down by that 
section itself. Many of the classes are exclusively drawn 
from members of the working class movement, which has 
a considerable solidarity of outlook and sentiment; stu¬ 
dents are interested in working class problems and are nor¬ 
mally sturdily enthusiastic to promote the future welfare 
of working people. But the state has not objected to this; 
it has insisted that the teaching should be nonpolitical and 
nonsectarian, but with those reservations it has come for¬ 
ward to provide the education that is asked for, recognizing 
with gratification that such education enables the students 
to pursue their own particular purposes with greater effec¬ 
tiveness and sense of proportion. On the whole it may 
fairly be claimed that the preservation of liberal standards 
in working class adult education has not been accompanied 
by any growth of spiritual paralysis in the promotion of 
working class aims, but has contributed considerably to the 
effectiveness and common sense with which those aims have 
been pursued. 

This has no doubt been rendered possible only by the 
protection of a liberal university tradition; like university 
teachers, adult education tutors have been allowed con¬ 
siderable freedom both in their teaching and in their self- 
devotion to causes in their private lives. There has been 
little or no reason for thinking this freedom to have any 
dangerous or detrimental effects from the point of view of 
sound education or of national unity; and on the side of 
credit it has done much to acquit adult education of the 
charge that it operates to paralyze the public will and to 
produce a listless and apathetic society. 

Unfortunately only a small proportion of the community 


C. R. Morris 


1J 3 

are, or are likely to be, affected directly by university or 
even by adult education. University education, as we know 
it in the great universities of Europe, has set before itself 
a special task, and it demands special aptitudes and inter¬ 
ests in the students; and the universities could not extend 
themselves so as to receive a really large proportion of mem¬ 
bers of the community without radically changing their 
aims and methods. To a large extent adult education in 
England has taken on the same character; it aims not at the 
mere dissemination of information but at providing a real 
education, in a fairly ambitious sense of the word. It is 
not of course uniformly successful in achieving its aims any 
more than the universities are uniformly successful; but 
it has met with a considerable measure of success, and in 
doing so it has shown fairly conclusively that, so long as it 
aims so high, it cannot expect to touch more than a small 
proportion of the population. 

It can achieve a great deal in the direction of leavening 
public opinion, but it cannot directly and personally touch 
more than a very small number of the members of the com¬ 
munity. What it does can only be done for students who 
have reached an adult age, and so long as it sticks to the 
hard road of education, avoiding the primrose path of 
propaganda, only a few adults will give it a chance to do 
what it can do. We must reconcile ourselves to the fact 
that the great majority of people, when they leave school, 
pass forever beyond the reach of all formal educational in¬ 
fluences. What the educational system does for them must 
be done in the schools or not at all. 

In the school it is inevitable that the liberal system 
should be at a grave disadvantage. If it were desired that 
children should be indoctrinated with some particular 
scheme of ideas and values, then, as Plato and other totali¬ 
tarian educationists have seen, the younger they are when 


U 4 Church, Community, State and Education 

the process is begun the better. But if they are to be en¬ 
couraged to grow up “ free,” the educationist must tie his 
hands far more restrictively than he need do with persons 
of maturer judgment. The sensitivity of youth to peda¬ 
gogic tricks is so extreme and so well known that it is not 
surprising that a liberal public should be extremely alert 
on the lookout for any sign of undue influence or propa¬ 
ganda; and this means that in all the humaner subjects the 
educational fire must inevitably be damped down all the 
time. 

This is a serious matter, as we have seen; the jealous fear 
of “ undue influence ” encroaches further and further on 
the subjects in the curriculum as the public conscience be¬ 
comes more sensitive and raw. In England we have not 
yet extended our suspicions to the teaching of arithmetic 
or orthography, but it is becoming increasingly difficult for 
the teacher to escape criticism with any teaching of moral 
or spiritual import. And the signs are that the educators 
themselves are on the run in this matter; instead of stand¬ 
ing up to public opinion and helping it to learn not to be 
silly, they too often earnestly anticipate causes of offense 
and make the content of their teaching more conscien¬ 
tiously characterless than ever. 

The first necessity is undoubtedly for each of us, and we 
may hope for public opinion, to gain some sense of propor¬ 
tion. We might well show a little less fear of allowing our 
teachers to show their own convictions; we might remem¬ 
ber that the immensely varied influences of the homes are 
brought to bear on children with as much force and per¬ 
sistence as the influence of the schools, and also that even 
in school each child is after all affected by more than one 
teacher. Both the teaching profession and educational 
committees ought to stand up to ill-grounded fears in the 
public mind far more than they do. 

Then it should also be remembered that as the educa- 


C. R. Morris 


tional system improves the genuine difficulties in the way 
of fair-minded education rapidly diminish. As classes get 
smaller, personal contact between teacher and individual 
pupils can become a constant reality instead of an imprac¬ 
ticable ideal, and the emotional response of the class can 
be less mass-produced. The enthusiasm of pupils can be 
encouraged along their own lines, instead of there being 
a necessity to create artificially a hearty mob emotion for 
the sake of keeping order and maintaining “ interest.” 
When teachers can spare more time and energy for confer¬ 
ence with parents, the latter will be able to think more ef¬ 
fectively about their children’s education and the schools 
will be less handicapped by the need to keep step with the 
demands of ignorant public criticism. Above all when the 
average age of school leaving is higher the situation will 
improve by leaps and bounds. Every year gained after 
fourteen is of enormous importance; by sixteen it is possi¬ 
ble to accustom the child to deal with general ideas and 
to set him upon the right road in learning to think. 

In the respects with which we are concerned, there is no 
doubt an enormous difference between the mind of the 
young undergraduate of eighteen and that of the schoolboy 
of sixteen; but it is far less than the gap which divides the 
school-leaving child of fourteen from his more favored 
brother of sixteen. The interest of the latter can be started 
in subjects which are entirely beyond the range of the 
former, and invaluable guidance can be given in the early 
stages; the really vital point is that education can, if only 
for a few brief months, proceed side by side with the birth 
and growth of real enthusiasms of a type which may well 
go on developing into adult life. This is no doubt not 
worth much unless the individual can be given a reasonable 
chance to go his own way; but where this is possible, at least 
a start can be made in the highest stage of education. 

Finally, the whole problem will be rendered progres- 


n 6 Church, Community, State and Education 

sively easier if and when the bitterness of feeling between 
social classes comes to die down. The fear of undue influ¬ 
ence does not really emasculate a liberal educational system 
unless the matters with regard to which the influence is or 
may be exerted involve deep and bitter feeling in the com¬ 
munity. We do not very much like propaganda in regard 
to affairs which we consider of small importance, but we 
can easily show philosophic detachment in expressing our 
dislike in such cases, and we shall not ordinarily be led to 
hasty or exaggerated action to prevent it. We have already 
seen that fears and jealousies based upon religious sec¬ 
tarianism are today nothing like as pervasive or as potent 
as they used to be. But an extreme sensitiveness on social 
matters has taken their place. When the worst causes of 
this are removed, we may reasonably hope that the fear of 
propaganda in free societies will sink back into due pro¬ 
portions, and liberal systems of education will lose their 
chief weakness. This happy state of affairs can itself be 
effectively promoted only by a sound education. 

hi 

The conclusion of these very insufficient reflections is 
that where, as in free societies, the state itself scruples to 
provide a full-blooded spiritual content to the education it 
offers, thereby turning that education into no more than 
state controlled propaganda, the only vital alternative is to 
welcome the contribution that can be made by voluntary 
associations. The educational system must at all costs 
learn, not to discourage and frustrate these, but to adapt 
itself to them and to train the youth to use all their abilities 
in the life of such associations. What is required is not a 
change of structure, nor even primarily a change of ma¬ 
chinery in the system, but a slight though important change 
of emphasis. So long as associations are free — free to die 


C. R. Morris 


117 

as well as to come into being — and so long as there are 
many of them and not only one, it is just a narrow and mis¬ 
guided distortion of liberalism which rejects them. And 
as for the apprehension that the encouragement of zealotry 
must be but the beginning of the end, since it acts almost 
as an invitation to the enemies of liberty to gird themselves 
for the fight in which they will eventually destroy it, we 
must find the courage to cast such fears behind us; coura¬ 
geous free institutions will be worth defending and will not 
easily be suppressed, but a semi-liberalism which has not 
the confidence to be either one thing or the other will com¬ 
mend itself to nobody. 

Free associations will exercise their main effect directly 
through their appeals to and calls upon adults; but indi¬ 
rectly they will affect the schools and the whole educational 
structure, in that these will be designed to train appropri¬ 
ately a generation which will live out its life in a commu¬ 
nity of free associations. Wherever the fire of voluntarism 
dies, the state will make a desperate effort to save itself by 
turning totalitarian. The education of a people that is to 
remain free must be securely based upon voluntary effort. 



PART II 


THE CRISIS IN CHRISTIAN 
EDUCATION 

by 

J. W. D. Smith 






THE CRISIS IN CHRISTIAN EDUCATION 


i 

It is significant that Christian education should require 
separate discussion in a volume of this character. Euro¬ 
pean education had its roots in the church of the Middle 
Ages and our educational tradition is a Christian one. In 
spite of diversity of origin or educational objective the uni¬ 
versities and schools of Europe retained for centuries the 
impress of their heritage. There were two basic elements 
in that heritage which were universally assumed. Man 
was recognized as a spiritual being with an eternal destiny. 
He was made by God for life with God. From that fact it 
followed that man’s earthly life only found its meaning and 
fulfilment in obedience to the moral and spiritual demands 
of his Christian vocation. God was recognized as the 
source and ground of all existence, and the ultimate loyalty 
of man’s soul was to him and to him only. While these as¬ 
sumptions continued to be a living influence in education 
there could be no necessity for discussing Christian educa¬ 
tion as such. 

Today we are faced with the fact that these two assump¬ 
tions are repudiated openly or implicitly throughout large 
areas of Europe. In totalitarian countries no loyalty is 
recognized which transcends loyalty to the current political 
ideal, and education in Russia is avowedly on an atheistic 
basis. These facts naturally arrest our attention, but they 
are merely symptoms of a movement which has affected 
European civilization as a whole. European thought and 
life has moved away from its former Christian basis to a 

121 


122 Church, Community, State and Education 

degree which we are only now beginning to realize. The 
change has not been expressed so much in a conscious re¬ 
pudiation of the Christian view as in a gradual loss of living 
interest in it. Men’s thoughts have been turned more and 
more toward the world of nature and the absorbing inter¬ 
ests of temporal life. A new type of civilization has been 
emerging in which man was regarded, in practice if not at 
first in theory, as an economic unit or biological entity 
rather than as a spiritual being made for eternal life with 
God. During the same period the Christian world view 
which unified the thought and experience of medieval Eu¬ 
rope suffered successive shocks with the advance of modern 
science and the old religious certainties were shaken. 
Christianity retained the traditional allegiance of large 
numbers of men and women. Religious revivals filled that 
allegiance with new meaning for many. Nevertheless the 
processes of decay were not finally arrested. Religious 
thought and practice became more and more isolated from 
the main stream of modern life. Thus the way was pre¬ 
pared for that strange blend of Christian ethics with the 
metaphysics of naturalism which goes by the name of scien¬ 
tific humanism. 

The extent to which this process has developed varies 
in different countries, and its effect is not always clearly 
recognized. In Britain, for example, the church still re¬ 
tains a position in public life which conceals the extent to 
which her hold on the community has weakened, and there 
is a strong traditional allegiance to Christian values which 
may create a false impression of the strength of Christian 
belief. A further source of confusion lies in the fact that 
the forces of modern life are not essentially anti-Christian. 
In some respects they are profoundly Christian in spirit. 
Scientific knowledge brings emancipation to the mind, and 
the methods of science provide a mighty instrument for the 


J. W. D. Smith 123 

refashioning of social life. Industrialism has an ugly sound 
in modern ears, but it contains untold possibilities for the 
enrichment of human life if it is properly controlled. And 
the new doctrines of social life which fill men’s thoughts 
contain germs of truth which we dare not ignore. These 
forces which are shaping a new culture are not consciously 
opposed to Christianity, but their fatal weakness is that 
they are unchristian. They do not so much deny the 
reality of God and the spiritual destiny of man as ignore 
it. Their implicit philosophy is naturalism. To a very 
great extent naturalism or secularism has become the un¬ 
acknowledged creed of the educated man. 

It is true that the influence of Christian ethics has sur¬ 
vived. It may even be claimed with justice that the last 
few decades have seen the emergence of a keener sense of 
social justice, a finer ideal of marriage and family life, and 
a new appreciation of the rights of individual personality. 
Christians have sometimes played the part of reactionary 
opponents upholding traditional views and the apostles of 
humanism have often been the prophets of this moral 
progress. But their gospel is a late flowering of the Chris¬ 
tian ethics and for them the plant has lost its roots in the 
eternal world. Without these roots it is doomed. It is im¬ 
possible to combine the ethics of Christianity with the 
metaphysics of naturalism. An unconditional moral de¬ 
mand can only be laid upon us by a Reality which is uncon¬ 
ditioned. Men may set up false Absolutes like the state 
or they may regard all morality as relative, but they cannot 
give up God and retain an unconditional allegiance to 
Christian values. Scientific humanism is an uneasy com¬ 
promise which cannot last. When the belief in man’s spir¬ 
itual nature and destiny is weakened the logic of the process 
leads inevitably to a deliberate repudiation of Christian 
ethics such as we see in Germany today. 


124 Church, Community, State and Education 


ii 

This situation has an important bearing on Christian 
education. How can religious education be effective 
within a community which is not itself religious? The 
subtle forces of community life shape the mind and char¬ 
acter of its members far more powerfully than verbal teach¬ 
ing can do. Children growing up in a community uncon¬ 
sciously absorb its traditions, and the prevailing values and 
beliefs of the community mold their life and conduct. 
Every individual is a member of several such communities 
by the time he reaches maturity, and the values embodied 
in the life of these different groups will often be at variance 
with one another. Yet beneath these differences all such 
communities tend to bear the mark of a wider culture in 
which they share. There are certain features common to 
any one age which permeate the thought and life of every 
community comprising it. Herein lies the root cause of 
the present crisis in Christian education. It is being under¬ 
taken within a community which is largely secular. 

In the modern community Christian education is pri¬ 
marily the function of the church. But the church’s mem¬ 
bers also belong to other communities and are subject to 
other influences. Provision for religious teaching is quite 
inadequate, therefore, unless there is clear recognition of 
the nature and extent of those deeper influences to which 
everyone is subject. Christian education is likely to be 
effective, humanly speaking, in two sets of circumstances. 
If the community life of the church is strongly marked and 
the loyalty of its members well developed its educational 
influence may be profound in spite of contrary influences 
from other sources. Christian education in tropical Africa 
takes place in a community which is demonstrably differ- 


J. W. D. Smith 125 

ent, in belief and conduct, from the small Christian groups 
responsible for that education. So, too, the early Christian 
church witnessed to a faith and life radically distinct from 
the life around it, and it nurtured men and women who 
“ turned the world upside down.” The very contrast may 
be a source of strength by intensifying the community life 
of the Christians. On the other hand educational influ¬ 
ences of a Christian character will be powerful, apart alto¬ 
gether from the special contribution of the church, in so 
far as the basic assumptions of the Christian heritage per¬ 
meate the general cultural life of the age. 

Neither of these conditions is effectively fulfilled in the 
modern world. The church in Western lands lacks a dis¬ 
tinctive witness which marks its members off from the life 
around them. Christians do not commonly feel themselves 
to be bound closely in common allegiance to a faith and a 
way of life which contrasts sharply with those of the com¬ 
munity as a whole. Christian people are deeply immersed 
in the life of the community. They are influenced by its 
intellectual outlook and social standards. They partici¬ 
pate freely in its practical activities. They are not con¬ 
scious of that separateness from the life around them which 
marks off the church of the first century or the communist 
cell today. Nor can it be said that the absence of that sense 
of separateness is due to a conquest of the world by the 
church. We have noted the fact that Western civilization 
has moved steadily away from the Christian conception of 
man’s nature and destiny during recent centuries. As a 
result the educational influences of the modern commu¬ 
nity, whether exercised through its schools or by the un¬ 
conscious processes of community life, are predominantly 
secular. The existence of this divergence between the 
Christian faith and the fundamental assumptions under- 


126 Church, Community, State and Education 

lying modern life is a grave obstacle to effective Christian 
education and the danger is greater because it is so seldom 
recognized. 

Of course there always has been and always must be con¬ 
flict between the Christian faith and the life of the world. 
It would be false to suggest that European civilization was 
ever more than very imperfectly Christianized. In some 
directions there is a more sensitive Christian conscience 
within that civilization today than there ever has been. 
The real change lies in the fact that the fundamental Chris¬ 
tian assumptions about the nature and destiny of man are 
being openly repudiated or silently ignored and, where 
that is true, allegiance to Christian values cannot be ex¬ 
pected to flourish indefinitely. And the weakness of the 
church’s position is that this divergence between modern 
secular culture and the Christian faith has not yet called 
forth an adequate and distinctive Christian witness. There 
certainly are points of tension between the church and the 
life around it, but the tension seems often to arise at the 
wrong points. 

The creative influence of Christ’s life and example must 
always be at war with the inertia of man’s nature and with 
the pressure of current social custom. The church does 
not exist to create a social utopia nor can it ally itself with 
political or social groups. But it should act as a ferment 
within the life of society, cleansing and re-creating the so¬ 
cial and economic fabric by the proclamation of Christian 
values and by the thought and life of its members. This 
demands a high standard of spiritual sensitiveness, for the 
pressure of current standards is subtle and persistent. The 
prophetic note is constantly in danger of being stifled by 
the weight of tradition and the church is apt to respond too 
slowly to the ethical implications of social and industrial 
changes. The communist attack on religion focuses on this 


J. W. D. Smith 127 

weakness. It is the opiate of the people. Instead of work¬ 
ing for the realization of Christ’s teaching on earth the 
churches have taught men to look to a future life for the 
fulfilment of their hopes and ideals. And the attack 
though crude is not unjustified. Communism could never 
have attained its present influence if the Christian church 
as a whole had been sensitive to the evils of the industrial 
revolution. But communist writers and other social proph¬ 
ets who attack or ignore religion are mostly preaching a 
biological ethic which pays little heed to man’s spiritual 
nature. By so doing they are destroying the essential foun¬ 
dations of the society they hope to build. A truly creative 
Christian community would find itself deeply critical of 
the present state of society yet sharply aware of the shallow 
philosophy of many of the popular social reformers. Un¬ 
fortunately the church too often seems to the outsider to 
come into conflict with modern social trends on questions 
like Sunday games or cinemas and divorce laws, while fail¬ 
ing to appreciate the more fundamental issues raised by the 
ethical consequences of nineteenth century individualism. 

There must always be tension too on the intellectual 
plane. There is a natural tension between the spectator 
attitude characteristic of science or philosophy and the re¬ 
ligious attitude. The first is critical and inquiring while 
the second is an attitude of worship and acceptance. God 
is an object of devotion to the saint, but a subject of dis¬ 
cussion for the philosopher. These two attitudes are not 
necessarily contradictory. Both should play their part in a 
healthy religious life and the tension between them, when 
consciously accepted, will be fruitful intellectually and 
spiritually. Unfortunately the church today seems to many 
to have created an unnecessary conflict in the minds of its 
members by failing to welcome and assimilate the vast store 
of new knowledge with which modern science has enriched 


128 Church, Community, State and Education 

our lives. She seems hesitant and suspicious in her attitude 
toward the newer sciences of personality and of social rela¬ 
tionships. She does not seem conscious of the profound 
spiritual significance of modern psychology’s contribution 
toward the cure of souls. She seems so far out of touch with 
the intellectual and spiritual life around her that many of 
the most sensitive educated men and women of our day fail 
to find expression for their religious needs and aspirations 
in her services of worship. 

At the same time the church seems to be insufficiently 
aware of the real point at which a serious divergence exists 
between the thought of the age and the faith of the church. 
There is no need to defend the faith against modern knowl¬ 
edge. The Christian faith needs no such defense. The 
real danger which threatens it today lies rather in a spir¬ 
itual malady which affects the whole of modern culture. 
For four or five hundred years men’s interests and energy 
have been turned persistently toward the world of nature 
and of human affairs. The progress of science and the 
growth of industrialism have proved so absorbing that the 
religious life of man has lost depth and vitality. And 
the church herself has shared in this decay of spiritual life. 
The spiritual world has become so unreal that the best 
known religious movement of our day has almost reduced 
religion to a psychological technique in which God is ir¬ 
relevant. God has passed out of our lives and we are so 
steeped in a humanistic culture that we have hardly grasped 
our loss. 

The picture is deliberately exaggerated. If it be even 
partially true it reveals clearly the obstacles to effective 
Christian education on the part of the church. These ob¬ 
stacles are twofold. The church has been slow to adjust 
herself to the ethical implications of modern social and in¬ 
dustrial developments. Christian ethics is still widely con- 


J. W. D. Smith 129 

fused with the moral codes of nineteenth century individu¬ 
alism, while those who are sensitive to the social and 
international issues of the age are deeply divided regarding 
the true Christian attitude toward them. Thus the church 
seems to have no distinctive ethical contribution to modern 
life and where tension arises it seems often to arise at the 
wrong points. Similarly the church seems at times to ig¬ 
nore or repudiate the new sources of life which scientific 
knowledge and scientific method have made available. On 
the other hand she seems to be unaware of the deep diver¬ 
gence between the basic assumptions of modern culture 
and the central affirmations of the Christian faith. The 
secular forces of modern life have sapped her own strength 
so that she is ill-equipped spiritually for recognizing this 
divergence or for the task of re-expressing her central faith 
in fresh thought and life. Of course there are many indi¬ 
viduals and many groups within the church of whom these 
statements are quite untrue. Therein lies the hope for 
effective Christian education. But we are concerned here 
with general trends, and one condition of the cure of our 
present ills would seem to be a clearer and more widespread 
understanding of the nature of the disease. 

hi 

What of the contribution to be made to Christian edu¬ 
cation by the school? A similar set of difficulties meets us 
in that sphere. With the growth of national school systems 
the problem of religion and education has been dealt with 
differently in different countries. In Britain, for example, 
education still nominally has a Christian basis. We point 
to the fact that public opinion has stood unfalteringly be¬ 
hind religious teaching in schools provided by the state, 
although it is open to any local education authority to 
omit it, and we congratulate ourselves complacently that 


130 Church, Community, State and Education 

the country is Christian at heart in spite of all the evidence 
to the contrary. Yet what is this “ Christian education ” 
of which we boast? Closer inspection may well destroy our 
complacency. No mere criticism of technical efficiency is 
implied. Scripture has a recognized place in the curricu- 
lums of our schools and the standard of teaching is certainly 
rising. No doubt the position is far from satisfactory, espe¬ 
cially in many of our secondary books. But there is a gen¬ 
eral awareness of the problem on its technical side and 
much is being done to improve scripture syllabuses and in¬ 
sure adequate training for teachers. All that is valuable, 
but it does not touch the root of the problem. 

The more effectively Scripture is taught the more clearly 
it may be expected to reveal the inherent contradiction 
in the present situation. The school is bound to reflect 
modern life and the curriculum of the school is deeply 
influenced by modern culture. But modern life and cul¬ 
ture are sub-Christian or un-Christian both on the ethical 
and religious levels. Capitalist society, which sets man 
against man in the struggle for material well-being, is es¬ 
sentially immoral, while the prophets of a new social order 
witness to the strength of the secular spirit by their attempt 
to combine ethical idealism with metaphysical naturalism. 
A double difficulty thus arises from the presence of Chris¬ 
tian teaching within a national system of education. If 
such teaching is effectively related to social realities it will 
provide a searching criticism of the social order which may 
not be welcome in a state school. If it is not so related it 
will dissolve in a rosy haze of sentiment and emotion, while 
the recognized standards of the everyday world remain the 
real guide for conduct. There is also inevitable tension 
between the scripture lesson with the religious view of life 
which it implies and the secular presuppositions which 
underlie the curriculum as a whole. Most of the regular 


J. W. D. Smith 131 

school subjects cultivate the critical inquiring attitude and 
focus attention on the world of nature and the temporal 
interests of man. The attitude of worship and the exist¬ 
ence of nontemporal realities are recognized mainly, if not 
exclusively, in school prayers and the scripture lesson. 
The two attitudes are not mutually exclusive, but there 
is inevitably a latent tension between them. Where it is 
unrecognized this tension frequently issues in the collapse 
of the weaker element. The religious view of life may be 
represented in the curriculum of the state school, as in 
Britain, but the intellectual presentation of it is inadequate 
and the weight of a humanistic culture is overwhelming. 
Can we wonder that scientific humanism is the creed — 
conscious or unconscious — of a growing proportion of 
the community? 

Our modern school systems reflect the current uncer¬ 
tainty about moral and spiritual values. The schools of 
the medieval church had a clear educational aim. They 
recognized man as a spiritual being whose chief end was 
“ to glorify God and enjoy him for ever.” The words are 
those of the Westminster Catechism, but modern life has 
moved steadily away from the conception thus enshrined 
in the teaching of the Puritan Reformers. What is the 
aim of modern education? To that question there is no 
clear answer because modern civilization has no clear sense 
of direction. The synthesis of all human knowledge and 
experience which medieval Christianity provided has gone 
and nothing has taken its place. The collapse of that syn¬ 
thesis was inevitable, nor should we wish to see a new rigid 
synthesis take its place. What we do need is a living faith 
which is capable of growth and adjustment with growing 
knowledge and changing conditions of life while preserv¬ 
ing the permanent truths of our Christian heritage in their 
full richness. Such a guiding philosophy for our common 


132 Church, Community, State and Education 

life is essential to its well-being. Such a philosophy would 
also provide that central purpose which every system of 
education needs to give it vitality and significance. It is 
the absence of it which is the real problem of education 
today as well as the deepest weakness in our common life. 

IV 

Here then is our central difficulty. Religious education 
is being attempted in a community within which the con¬ 
ditions of such education are not present because the 
governing values of that community have become largely 
secular. There is no guiding philosophy which deter¬ 
mines modern values, for the secularization of life has 
been a gradual process and largely unconscious. When 
conscious paganism rears its head large numbers of men 
recoil from it. Yet they have no effective alternative. 
That philosophy is the logical outcome of a process in 
which they themselves are immersed. Modern man is per¬ 
plexed by the complexity of his own nature and is uncer¬ 
tain of his destiny. At the heart of that uncertainty lies 
the question: Is man made for time only or for eternity? 
The crisis of modern education and of modern culture 
is contained in that question. Christianity has an answer 
to it, but that answer has become formal and threadbare. 

Man was made for a life of fellowship with God in time 
and in eternity. But men and women must be continually 
regenerated and sustained by divine grace if they are to 
enter into that life and continue in it. And that life im¬ 
plies a redeemed community as well as redeemed indi¬ 
viduals. We need a deeper, more realistic apprehension 
of the meaning and significance of these statements. The 
life and thought of the church have been deeply affected 
by modern humanism, and the church as a whole has lost 
both the realistic pessimism and the profound optimism 


J. W. D. Smith 133 

which belong to the classic Christian conception of human 
nature and destiny. At the same time she has become en¬ 
tangled in the ethical standards of a temporary social order, 
and has failed to provide a realistic analysis of contem¬ 
porary society from the standpoint of eternal values. 

There are many signs of a new movement of the spirit 
in our time. A consciousness of religious need is widely 
manifest. The facts of social life are being more realisti¬ 
cally faced, and Christians are finding themselves com¬ 
pelled to seek a more profound religious understanding of 
human life. It is out of this fresh stirring of the spirit that 
more effective Christian education may be expected to 
emerge. The communist analogy of the “ cell ” gives an 
excellent picture of the way in which fresh insight spreads. 
The whole machinery of Christian education through 
church or school must be maintained and improved, but 
the solution of the present crisis in Christian education 
lies with those groups of men and women who are sensitive 
to the intellectual and social issues of our time and, im¬ 
pelled by them, are seeking a more profound Christian 
insight. Nor will the conditions of effective religious edu¬ 
cation be present within the church as a whole until the 
answer to that question of man’s nature and destiny comes 
again with new conviction out of a deep, disturbing ex¬ 
perience of the living God. 






CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN THE WORLD 
OF THE PRESENT DAY: ITS NATURE 
AND ITS MISSION 


by 

Ph. Kohnstamm 










CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN THE WORLD 
OF THE PRESENT DAY: ITS NATURE 
AND ITS MISSION 

1. SOME BASIC CONSIDERATIONS 

(a) Definition of Our Task. The preceding papers, 
especially those of Clarke and Smith, have made us ac¬ 
quainted with the twofold crisis in which current educa¬ 
tion finds itself involved. On the one hand, they showed 
us the contrast between the way in which education 
is understood by the totalitarian and by the liberal- 
democratic state. Whereas in the former the whole em¬ 
phasis is laid on educating the members of a community 
to take their place in that community, education in demo¬ 
cratic countries — although not always in theory, yet actu¬ 
ally in practice — insisted rather too strongly on the cen¬ 
tral importance of the education of the individual. On 
the other hand we saw that the type of education which 
has been traditional in the church is in a very critical 
position, as the result of secularist attacks which have had 
an extensive influence. 

It is for other writers in this series of volumes to investi¬ 
gate whether these two apparently quite different conflicts 
are at bottom interconnected, and especially to try to find 
out whether the whole phenomenon of the emergence of 
the totalitarian state (in the sense which is here spoken of) 
is not a consequence of this process of secularization. 
Hence in this paper I will not discuss this question any 
further, but will simply express my conviction that secu¬ 
larization (i.e., the process by which man’s awareness of 

137 


138 Church, Community, State and Education 

himself as a creature of God is destroyed) must always 
and everywhere lead to an exaggeration of the power of 
the state. 

Further, within the limits of this volume, it is not pos¬ 
sible to open up the whole question of Christian education. 
Our problem is not “ the Church and Education,” but the 
relation between church, community, and state in the 
sphere of education. But those who take part in the ecu¬ 
menical discussion on this theme will be continually at 
cross purposes unless they begin by coming to some agree¬ 
ment as to what is meant by “ education ” within the sphere 
of the church, and, as a consequence of that, what rights 
are of necessity to be conceded to the state in educational 
matters. And such an explanation of the idea with which 
we are dealing is the more necessary because in German¬ 
speaking countries, and in German pedagogical literature, 
the word “ erziehung,” which seems to be equivalent to 
“ education,” has a humanistic significance, which makes 
it extremely difficult to understand why in other languages 
what seems to be equivalent has indeed another meaning. 

So this makes it necessary to examine at least briefly 
what is meant by Christian education. 

(b) Education and Evangelization. Those for whom 
the Bible contains the supreme standards know that each 
individual human being, and therefore each child, stands 
in a direct relation to God, and that no one has any right 
to interfere with his neighbor in this relation of depend¬ 
ence on God. Living as we do in a civilization which has 
been profoundly influenced by Christianity, we find that 
these ideas have also influenced secular education. The 
first effect of their influence has been that this Christian 
reverence for the conscience of others has produced a state 
of mind in which we shrink from trying to control and 
determine the lives of others. This negative pedagogy is 
to be found in Rousseau, Tolstoy, and Ellen Key; in the 


Ph. Kohnstamm 


139 

pedagogy of humanism and socialism on the continent, it 
gives rise to the conviction that “ letting a child mature and 
grow up ” should take the place of authority. But this 
pedagogy without authority becomes a danger to state and 
to society. Hence further change in secularized education, 
which again can be seen very clearly in Rousseau; the edu¬ 
cation which he begins in “ freedom ” finally enslaves the 
pupil, since it attempts to make the pupil's will wholly sub¬ 
ject to that of the educator. Speaking generally, it can 
be said that throughout the area of secularization what 
happens is that an earthly authority gives itself out to be 
divine, or at any rate allows itself to be given out as such, 
on the ground that only in that way can authority be main¬ 
tained. Now what Christian education means can be best 
presented by way of contrast to this aberration. Christian 
education is the action of one who is aware that he can 
never become the ultimate source of authority for another, 
but that he can make him feel that both of them alike stand 
before the only real authority, that is, the authority of God. 
To that extent, education has the same aim as evangeliza¬ 
tion, and especially as missionary work, since in the latter 
term the relation of the more to the less advanced is im¬ 
plicit from the outset. In comparison with this agreement 
on essentials, the differences are of a secondary nature, and 
arise from the fact that in the case of education we are deal¬ 
ing with differences in maturity which are conditioned 
primarily by the succession of generations, and, in the case 
of missionary work, with differences arising from another 
source. So we do not doubt that in education also we can 
and should hold fast to the words of Paul, in which he 
speaks of our being laborers together with God. He gives 
the increase, while we have to plant and water; but youth 
remains God’s husbandry and ought to be God’s building . 1 

A further result of this is that we are freed from the con- 
1 1 Cor. 3, 6-9. 


140 Church, Community, State and Education 

elusive efforts to which a secularized education almost of 
necessity leads when it takes its task in dead earnest. A 
Christian is resigned to the fact that he cannot himself do 
what is ultimately and preeminently required; he may, 
and indeed he must, leave that to God. Faced with the task 
of preparing the next generation to meet the demands of 
state and community, Christian education goes soberly to 
work, because the reality in which it is rooted is that of a 
fallen world. A certain compulsion in education is, there¬ 
fore, indispensable, but we must neither enhance it in ro¬ 
mantic fashion nor use religion to cast a glamor over it, but 
it must arise naturally out of the necessities embodied in 
social, economic, and cultural facts. 

This sobriety on the part of Christian education is in 
marked contrast to the pedagogy of humanism and ide¬ 
alism, inasmuch as it has courage to exact discipline, and 
in particular courage to punish. For no education which 
works at the level of human autonomy does or can produce 
this kind of courage, for the reason that it does not know 
the meaning of forgiveness and grace. But, in contrast to 
the “ will-to-education ” of the totalitarian state, this so¬ 
briety of Christian education is to be seen in the way it 
distinguishes questions of discipline from questions of con¬ 
science, while the totalitarian state, which is in essence the 
repudiation of all limits, cannot recognize any limit at this 
point. Thus Christian education is freed from the fear 
that, either, on the one hand, freedom may be lost, or, on 
the other hand, genuine freedom may have disastrous ef¬ 
fects, because it only preserves this freedom in all its range, 
where what is at stake is really a question of conscience. 
For it knows — and in this faith it acts — that the whole 
realm of culture in all its variety — and all human ten¬ 
sions are resolved into a harmony in Jesus Christ, and this 
makes it proof against the temptation to bring about a 


Ph. Kohnstamm 


141 

harmony artificially through the application of compul¬ 
sion. 

(c) Jesus Christ as the Center of Christian Education. 
These last remarks have already indicated what, or rather 
who, is the center of all Christian education. In the center 
of all the considerations which follow, we set the confession 
which the church makes in every land and every age: 
Kyrios Christos, Jesus Christ is our Lord. 

Of course it is not our intention to enter into the signif¬ 
icance of this confession in its whole depth and breadth. 
We must confine ourselves here to a few brief remarks 
which are of particular importance for education. What 
must be emphasized in the first place, is that this confession 
must not remain a truth which we passively accept, while 
our feelings and our conduct remain unaltered. On the 
contrary, it ought to be a profoundly personal relation 
which gives a new character to the whole of our life. 
“ Jesus Christ my Lord! ” — that is not only an insight or 
a truth at which I arrive, it is, at the same time, an oath 
of fidelity and an expectation. We yield ourselves to him 
because without him we cannot live, because we know our¬ 
selves sustained by him in all life’s troubles and trials, es¬ 
pecially in those for which our own sinful hearts are to 
blame. We want to be Christians because we know that 
only in Christ is the world’s salvation. 

This also means that we have attained the knowledge 
that only through him is real human fellowship possible. 
To be sure, there does exist an intercourse between men 
on a purely “ natural ” basis, and just this association at the 
level of impulse or instinct shows itself at work with ap¬ 
palling obviousness in the mass movements of our time. 
But it is clear that in them common aggression creates the 
feeling of community, and the community, on the other 
hand, favors hatred against those who do not belong to it. 


142 Church, Community, State and Education 

Love, which is quite different from this instinctive associa¬ 
tion— in the Greek, agape and not eros — is always de¬ 
rived from Christ, whether it is aware or not that its origin 
is in him. And the more aware it is of this origin, the 
stronger and nobler the forms will be into which it de¬ 
velops. This is shown in every type of human fellowship; 
for whether we are concerned with friendship, or the love 
of husband and wife, love between parents and children, 
love of one’s people or of an individual belonging to one’s 
people, or of humanity, all these are constantly being im¬ 
periled by our self-assertion and desire for mastery, our 
weakness, cowardice, and blindness. 

But, in Jesus Christ, we find the way to God as the source 
of all love, goodness, wisdom and power. He has taught 
us what prayer is, and in his name we venture to pray, 
strange and full of contradiction though such a venture 
must be in all eyes, which he has not opened. For how is 
“ natural reason ” to understand that an omnipotent God 
concerns himself with the words of small, frail creatures, 
that a holy God has compassion on sinners, yes, seeks them 
in a world that would be lost without him? Only as we 
yield ourselves to Christ’s call does such a confidence be¬ 
come reality for us, only as we do so does life win a firm 
basis, and our thought and action gain certainty and 
direction. 

Now Christian education is simply the attempt to be of 
service to a young person so that he may find this way of 
“ trustful obedience ” (I borrow this translation of pistis 
from Delekat’s version of Romans ). For the child in his 
natural state is not familiar with it. When, in Matthew 
18, 3, children are pointed to as examples for adults, we 
have no right to interpret what is said as though that were 
the case; rather must we read the passage in connection 
with Matthew 19, 14, where it is said that we are not to 


Ph. Kohnstamm 


143 

forbid children to come to Christ, which means that when 
they get to know him they feel themselves attracted to 
him. In the Christian family, and in every other form of 
society which is based on Christ, modes of living are de¬ 
veloped which help to demolish the hindrances which are 
caused by the purely “ natural ” life. 

But we hinder the children’s approach to the Master 
quite as much by what we leave undone as by what we do. 
There is such a thing as giving either too much or too little 
help, and also of giving the wrong kind of help. In the next 
section we shall deal with these points in more detail; here 
we must emphasize that in Christian education we are con¬ 
cerned with the whole life of the young person. The 
whole life — this means consciousness and being, thought 
and action. Education is more than instruction, and works 
at a deeper level than the appropriation of knowledge 
which can remain isolated from disposition and action. 
And education is also more than habit formation, the im¬ 
print of forms of conduct which appear to be permanent, 
but really are only impressed from the outside. Education 
cannot dispense with instruction nor with habit formation 
as auxiliaries, but it is itself more than these. It is a way of 
living together which enables the older and the younger 
generation to share a common life of such a character that, 
in the course of it, something of the meaning and worth 
of the world and of human life dawns on the younger 
through the words and deeds of the older. But this must 
become the younger generation’s own possession; and that 
can happen only when the educator is aware that he is 
there to serve , but not to rule, to be of assistance to youth, 
but not to take the work and the responsibility from their 
hands. 

Especially, at this point, must we bear in mind the fol¬ 
lowing words of Oldham: 


144 Church, Community, State and Education 

In one of the most decisive and revolutionary of his re¬ 
corded sayings, Jesus drew the sharpest distinction between 
the values of his own kingdom and those prevailing in the 
world. “ Ye know,” he said, “ that the rulers of the Gentiles 
lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over 
them. Not so shall it be among you.” He illuminated in a 
flash the problem of power, which is central in the relation of 
men with one another, and which in spite of its importance has 
received less attention from Christian thought than it deserves. 

For from this it follows immediately that Christian edu¬ 
cation aims at responsible living: i.e., the life of a man who 
stands in direct intercourse with God, knows himself to be 
addressed by him, answers him, and listens to what he has 
to say. To that extent, it is also an independent way of 
living: i.e., it is not directly dependent upon other persons. 
Of course this does not by any means imply a life in isola¬ 
tion, for God, as he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, 
constantly refers us to our neighbor, and only through this 
reference does a man find the right attitude to his neighbor. 

A young person, however, finds this way in a community 
and not in isolation. Just as his intellect is not developed 
but crippled if he grows up outside the living community 
constituted by those who speak his mother tongue, so he 
needs a full and deep common life in order to grow up 
in faith, i.e., in trustful obedience to the Father of Jesus 
Christ. Without the example of others and intercourse 
with them, he will not even know what these words mean. 

2 . DEFECTS OF TRADITIONAL EDUCATION 

The recognition that human fellowship has such a far- 
reaching influence also means, however, that it raises the 
fateful question: Has the fellowship of Christ, the church, 
hitherto sufficiently expressed her own insights and prin¬ 
ciples in education? Does the twofold crisis with which 
we are concerned possibly mean that Christianity has not 


Ph. Kohnstamm 


145 

done enough planting, and has not adequately watered the 
young plant? 

“ Every man shall receive his own reward according to 
his own labor.” 2 Is perhaps this twofold crisis in which 
the world is now involved the reward of an educational 
activity which took its work too lightly? In this section 
we will deal with five of the main reasons which seem to 
justify an affirmative answer to this question: in so doing, 
however, we do not assert that there are not other impor¬ 
tant causes, either inside or outside the sphere of education. 

(d) Intellectualism. The first and perhaps the most 
dangerous error of traditional education is its intellectu¬ 
alism. In fact, it seems as though the traditional view, at 
any rate on the continent of Europe, regards education as 
an affair of the head rather than of the heart, and pays more 
attention to the formulation of correct theological formu¬ 
lae than to a life of trustful obedience. The penalty for 
this has been heavy. I give one example, which could 
easily be multiplied. Gunther Dehn summarizes as follows 
an inquiry he conducted covering several thousand young 
people in Berlin: 

In no instance can we discover any trace of a personal rela¬ 
tion to the person of Jesus in any boy or girl. In general, Jesus 
is seldom mentioned. When he is, he is either regarded quite 
in the traditional way, as the miracle-working Son of God (his 
words do not play any part), or as the first Socialist. No one 
seems to know what is meant by faith, nor what is meant by 
communion with God or a life lived in his sight. ... Of 
course, the fact that very often orthodox ecclesiastical dogmas 
were reproduced in the essays makes no difference to this pic¬ 
ture. 

Here we see the root of the disaster which threatens 
Christian education as a whole and Christian religious in- 

2 1 Cor. 3:8. 


146 Church, Community, State and Education 

struction in particular. Far be it from me to deny the im¬ 
portance of theological formulation, as though one should 
claim that Christian living, and therefore Christian educa¬ 
tion, are possible without knowledge and so without 
instruction. But the more I have studied not only children 
and young people, but adults as well, the clearer has it 
become to me that doctrine can only really mold life when 
it is itself the expression of an experience that is anchored 
deeper in our personality than any purely intellectual 
knowledge or understanding. Here there is a certain 
movement, a dialectic between consciousness and the 
deeper emotional and volitional strata of human nature, 
to which our traditional “ Christian instruction ” seldom 
does justice. 

To me it seems quite clear that this over-estimation of 
the intellectual factor in education is linked with the fact 
that the churches of the continent are too exclusively in 
the hands of students of theology. Laymen, and especially 
women, would give a different emphasis from that which is 
common to the traditional type of education; hitherto they 
have had far too little responsibility for such development. 
This has made faith too much of an abstraction, while its 
connection with daily life and its activities has fallen into 
the background. And this inclination to abstraction which 
is inherent in all theology, just because it is not living faith 
itself, but a scientific exposition of that faith, is still further 
strengthened by the fact that even today the prevailing 
theology is of scholastic, i.e., Aristotelian origin. But the 
“ unmoved Prime Mover ” of Aristotle is an abstraction 
which has only a slight connection with the Father of Jesus 
Christ as he is revealed in the Old and the New Tes¬ 
tament. How vast a difference there is between the two we 
discover, to our amazement, when we compare one of the 
current catechisms, or a textbook of religious instruction. 


Ph. Kohnstamm 


147 

alongside of Green Pastures, the negro play which has 
created such a sensation, and in which we are shown how 
the Bible is taught to negro children, and then reflect that 
the Bible itself is incomparably nearer to this primitive 
and concrete presentation than to the abstractions of the¬ 
ology. Let no one object that it % is precisely the intellec¬ 
tuals who are affected primarily by the apostasy of our day, 
and the mass of the people only as influenced by them. 
For in the deepest needs of his life the intellectual of our 
own day is a thoroughly primitive person who has lost his 
way in life, and cannot find it again with the aid of his posi¬ 
tivistic science. He is a ship without compass or rudder. 
In this, I am completely in agreement with J. W. D. Smith 
when he says: 

A guiding philosophy for our common life is essential to its 
well-being. Such a philosophy would also provide that cen¬ 
tral purpose which every system of education needs to give it 
vitality and significance. It is the absence of it which is the 
real problem of education today as well as the deepest weak¬ 
ness in our common life. 

I am firmly convinced that we not only need such a 
philosophy, but that it is already to be seen in outline 
among us. Its working out and further development will, 
of course, not be the affair of the individual, but rather the 
task of earnest collaboration within the church. 

But this work must not be exclusively, nor even pri¬ 
marily, directed toward man as “ knowing,” if, that is, we 
take the word “ knowledge ” in the sense of Greek phi¬ 
losophy and not in the biblical one. For in the latter sense, 
the “ knowledge of God ” is not so much a concept of God 
as a life with him. 

This, however, brings us to our second point. 

(e) The Underestimation of Activity . It is one of the 
most perilous consequences of the view of education with 


148 Church, Community, State and Education 

which we have just dealt that man’s cooperation in God’s 
plan of salvation is underestimated. In fact, the idea of 
an Almighty God who yet needs weak and sinful men as 
his fellow workers is a thought which is “ foolishness ” to 
Greeks of every land and every age. All the same, it is an 
essential element in the gospel. And it is a gospel with a 
peculiar appeal for children and young people. Children 
and young people do not understand the view that there 
can be such a thing as trustful obedience which does not 
bear fruit in daily life. And if they were theologically 
trained, they could appeal for confirmation to the greatest 
theologians of the Una Sancta, not only to Roman Catholic 
doctrine, but even to the Heidelberg Catechism, though in 
this case from a different angle. 

Merely as a matter of theory, therefore, to insist that 
Christian life — and so Christian education as well — 
must take cognizance of action, will meet with little or no 
opposition. It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that 
in practice the kind of education which has remained on 
the traditional basis scarcely ever provides the impulse to 
activity with an opportunity to express itself. Certainly, in 
the devotional part of a service, the child has been accorded 
sometimes a place which makes him more than a listener. 
This has been done on the Roman Catholic side by Maria 
Montessori, and on the Protestant side by some new ven¬ 
tures in Sunday school method, which deserve recognition, 
such as the movement emanating from Westhill. But such 
procedure is exceptional and does not cover what is in my 
mind essential. For a religious service can very easily be 
divorced from the rest of life as an aesthetic experience 
which remains apart from the formation of the whole man. 
This danger is particularly to be feared in the case of the 
child, because his psychical life is still so far from having 
achieved unity. The child and the young person equally 


Ph. Kohnstamm 


149 

fail to see the connection between such an experience and 
simple daily life; it is in danger of becoming an experience 
for Sunday, which has no point of contact with daily life. 

But it is at this very point that the child’s need lies: 
he needs to learn to see the things of daily life in the light 
of obedience to God’s claim on him. If anyone objects that 
this means overemphasizing the law at the expense of grace, 
he has not yet understood why Paul (in Gal. 3, 24) calls 
the law a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ. It is by fol¬ 
lowing the law that we become confirmed in obedience; 
and the danger that one may learn to pride oneself on one’s 
obedience can easily be guarded against in the Christian 
family-circle, where every day our mistakes come to light 
so clearly and in such detail. At least, that is the case if 
only the educators have a clear knowledge of themselves, 
and are not too arrogant, nor feel themselves too much on 
a pedestal, to go so far as to join with the child in a common 
confession in the presence of God. 

This is obviously not the place to discuss the many prob¬ 
lems which the Oxford groups raise for us. But I would 
like to emphasize this one point, that, to my mind, we have 
here undoubtedly one of the reasons why in many countries 
the Oxford groups are growing into what is perhaps the 
one Christian mass movement of our day, and why they 
exercise so strong an attraction for young people on the 
threshold of manhood and woman-hood. 

Closely connected with this need to bring not only our 
thought and speech, but also, and especially, our action, 
into the service of God, is the need for an understanding 
of the gospel which does not confine it to the next world. 
That this earth is only a “ vale of tears ” and “ lies wholly 
in the wicked one ” is an incomprehensible idea for young 
people even in a time so exceptionally gloomy and threat¬ 
ening as the present. I am convinced that in this they 


150 Church, Community, State and Education 

are more in accordance with the Bible than those who 
follow that pietistic view, which is solely interested in the 
next world, a view which is still widespread even in our 
present-day education, at least outside the Anglo-Saxon 
countries. 

I shall have to come back to this point in another con¬ 
nection. Here I will only remark that there is a close re¬ 
lation between it and the controversy often spoken of as 
that between the continental and the Anglo-Saxon types 
of presentation of the gospel. It is common knowledge 
that the former type often rejects somewhat disdainfully 
the world-acceptance of the latter and the optimism of its 
social gospel. And, for my own part, I must admit that I 
too often find the expressions against which this criticism 
is directed inadequate and over-simplified, when consid¬ 
ered as theological statements. I do not see how a pres¬ 
entation of the gospel can do itself justice without an es¬ 
chatological and other-worldly element. But as a student 
of educational problems, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact 
that it is precisely in the Anglo-Saxon countries — though 
perhaps one should include Scandinavia as well — that 
secularization has, comparatively speaking, done least to 
crowd the church out of its place in public life. Can it, 
perhaps, be the case that in these countries, though their 
theology may be more open to question, the churches have 
made themselves more intelligible to laymen with no theo¬ 
logical training, and to young people in particular? I do 
not raise this question here with any intention of offering 
an answer to it; but it seems to me of the very greatest im¬ 
portance, and something which deserves and needs our 
thought and prayer. 

(f) False Emphasis on Distance. Closely connected 
with the danger of underestimating Christian action, i.e., 
action planned and carried out in obedience to Christ, lies 


Ph. Kohnstamm 


151 

the danger of stressing too much the feeling of “ distance ” 
in education. I mean by this, asking children and young 
people to see their whole life from the standpoint of the 
cross. If we follow closely the quotation from Gunther 
Dehn we shall see the disastrous consequences of such an 
attitude. Jesus as the miracle-working Son of God, whose 
teaching has no part to play, and to whom, therefore, one 
does not stand in any experiential and personal relation — 
this is at bottom the old Docetic heresy, but even now it 
seems hard to eradicate it from preaching, pastoral work, 
and education. 

Certainly it is easier to use correct expressions about 
Christ than so to yield oneself to him that he takes shape 
in us, and his power so shines through our weakness that 
it lays hold on all who come in contact with us. And yet it 
is precisely that which is of more effect in education than 
anything else. This being the case, we must not be 
ashamed even of our weakness. As we have already em¬ 
phasized, the traditional Christian education still builds 
too much on the sand of human authority, instead of on 
the rock of God’s authority. To be sure, even in Christian 
education, there is a position of authority for parents and 
educators, or rather it is precisely here that there is such a 
position; yet woe to us if we forget that this authority can 
only be a temporary substitute for another! Herein, I 
think, lies a serious failing on the part of traditional edu¬ 
cation, in Christian circles as elsewhere; I mean that it is 
not sufficiently aware of the danger we all constantly run 
of wanting to rule instead of to serve. The pride, i.e., the 
disobedience of the adult, is almost always partly respon¬ 
sible for the disobedience of his pupils. Out of the huge 
mass of literature on the subject of education, I know few 
books which take this fact sufficiently into account. And it 
is at a time like the present, with its apparent emphasis on 


152 Church, Community, State and Education 

authority (though unfortunately only too often it is really 
the worship of violence), that we are doubly tempted to 
forget that Christian education at any rate must follow a 
different line of action. I am well aware that I should 
never have perceived the full bearing of this truth had it 
not been for the great assistance which the new psychology 
renders. I shall return to this under section (i). 

Here I wish to point out yet another aspect of this wrong 
feeling of “ distance.” It is one of the splendid “ foolish¬ 
nesses ” of the Bible that God, the Almighty Creator of 
heaven and earth, is concerned for the individual and what 
befalls him. But actually, in circles which we usually speak 
of as definitely Christian, people frequently live as though 
it were only the “ great and important ” decisions of their 
life which involve them in a relation to God. The wor¬ 
ship of God is something which belongs to Sunday, and 
possibly to certain moments in daily life which are of a 
serious and important character. But that each of our acts 
down to the minutest detail — the way in which we say 
“ good morning! ” or give an order, or look for the news¬ 
paper that is mislaid — is an essential expression of our 
inner self and ought to be brought under God’s discipline, 
is frequently denied. We must not bring such “ trifles ” 
into connection with God! But for children there are no 
trifles in this sense. What seems to us unimportant may 
be bitter earnest to them, and their vision is often clearer 
than ours. Christian education has never yet reckoned 
deeply enough with Matt. 18, 6 and its serious implica¬ 
tions. And in part at least, it is what we have sown in 
such “ trifles,” and in habits that were left to take their 
course, that is being reaped now in the general seculariza¬ 
tion and in a world full of resentment and aggression. 

(g) The role of fear. “ Be not afraid; for behold I 
bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all 


Ph. Kohnstamm 


153 

people! ” That is the first public proclamation of Jesus 
Christ in the world. 

Has Christian education always gone to work in this 
way? How does it go to work nowadays? An answer to 
the first question may be dispensed with. So far as the 
second is concerned, we can say that the situation is better 
than it was a hundred years ago. 

There is a dreadful hell 
And everlasting pains; 

There sinners must with devils dwell 
In darkness, fire, and chains. 

In her valuable book on Child Psychology and Religious 
Education (S.C.M., London, 1928), Dorothy Wilson 
quotes this verse from a collection of the year 1852 as spe¬ 
cially written for children. No one will be found to defend 
it today. But anyone who gets his information from the 
childhood recollections of our adult contemporaries, or 
possesses the confidence of children and young people, 
knows that a great deal of this kind of thing is still a reality, 
albeit in a less gross form. Of course, there are consider¬ 
able differences on this point in different countries and 
within a single country. In particular, British friends 
have told me that my description does not apply to British 
or American education today, and I will gladly accept 
that, although it does not seem quite to agree with Dorothy 
Wilson’s experiences. And in any case, on the Continent 
there are still large groups — as, for example, was shown 
in the discussions at the third Dassel Conference in 1936 
of Christian workers among boys and girls of secondary 
schools — which need to be warned against this mistake. 
Of course, in so doing, we must be on our guard against 
the opposite temptation to a too “ friendly ” attitude in 
the course of education. We must not think of touching 


154 Church, Community, State and Education 

up the stern features in the portrait of our Lord, the Judge 
of the world, so as to produce a “ liberal portrait of Jesus.” 
To adults, and perhaps also to young people, there were 
words of unsurpassable severity and warning spoken by 
the Lord. But nowhere in the Gospels — I think one 
can say, nowhere in the Bible — are children addressed in 
that way. Thanks to modern child study, the significance 
of this fact is much clearer to us than it used to be; but 
traditional Christian education has not yet appropriated 
its consequences. 

Fear is a frightful poison which does its work in secret; 
it grows and grows unnoticed and destroys all courage and 
all trust. Only God who knows the innermost recesses of 
the heart, knows the course it runs and can control it. 
And yet perhaps we men have it in our power to thwart 
his will, when we impress our little faith and our despair 
on our children and children’s children to the third and 
fourth generation. 

And yet only too often so-called “ Christian education ” 
does not hesitate to take this road; indeed, it often regards 
this as the goal at which it should aim. I illustrate by the 
following, for which I can vouch. 

A mentally defective lad of nine came home from the 
special school he was attending. Still full of what he had 
heard there of the goodness and love of Jesus, he gave vent 
to his feelings in the exclamation “ God loves us all.” The 
incensed father struck the table with his fist and shouted: 
“ What confounded nonsense! better tell you that you are 
dead in sin and damnation.” The lad stood a moment like 
one nonplused and then he thrust out his tongue and ran 
from the room, shouting impudently, “ You know nothing 
about it, for Jesus likes us all the same.” Of course, I am 
fully aware that this is an extreme case, but it is just by 
extreme cases that we can bring to our notice what we over¬ 
look in moderate ones. 


Ph. Kohnstamm 


155 

Now my assertion, nay, rather my accusation, is that 
traditional Christian education acts only too often on this 
principle, though not to the same extent. It demands that 
dogmatic judgments should be reached at an age when 
one is not psychologically mature enough to understand. 
It abandons the evangelical way — and, to my knowledge, 
this happens as often in so-called evangelical Christianity 
as in other parts of the Una Sancta — thinking that a man 
must be thrown into despair for his sins before the gospel 
of God’s love can be preached to him. But that is to 
reverse the proper order. The gospel teaches us that only 
the assurance of the divine love and grace by which our 
life is sustained awakens the sense of sin, for apart from 
this we should not be able to endure it. 

Life is not the highest of things good. 

But the greatest of evils is guilt. 

So speaks Schiller. But he shows by that that he is a hu¬ 
manist and not a Christian; for if he had been, he would 
have known that no feeling of guilt is comparable with 
that sense of utter vileness which the Christian calls aware¬ 
ness of sin. This sorest of all human experiences is his 
only who “ comes to himself ” 3 as he recalls the seeking 
love of his Father, and, to be able to do so, he must know 
that love. 

But it is only the mature man who “ comes to himself ” 
in this way. The child is capable of feeling guilty; he 
knows quite early what guilt is, while his parents are still 
for him “ in the place of God.” And then is the time for 
him to learn what forgiveness is; then he should begin to 
divine, however dimly — a truth which has remained 
hidden from a psychologist like Freud up to an advanced 
age — that the name Father in the Bible does not stand 
for “ the conception of a higher being who punishes in- 
s St. Luke 15:17. 


156 Church, Community, State and Education 

exorably,” and does not possess “ the hard, cruel features 
of an imperious ought ” 4 but that the Father of Jesus 
Christ is that God of whom it is said in the one hundred 
and third Psalm: 

As far as the east is from the west. 

So far hath He removed our transgressions from us. 

Like as a father pitieth his children. 

So the Lord pitieth them that fear Him. 

But only he who knows this compassion can fathom 
what it means to reject it and to cut oneself off from it. 
“ Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved 
us, and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins/' 
But how is “ Christian education ” to lead to such knowl¬ 
edge if it confronts the child with an accusation of sin¬ 
fulness while it is still developing and immature, before it 
knows love? 

(h) Special Problems of Education of Girls. Up to this 
point, everything which has been said applies to education 
as a whole, for boys and girls alike. Unfortunately, we 
male beings have to recognize that, due especially to our 
pride, there are special dangers for the other sex. To be 
“ only a girl ” is a bitter experience, and, what is worse, a 
source of disobedience and rebellion for which often the 
educators must bear the blame. In the same way special 
dangers attend on the preference which is shown to the 
eldest son and the greater readiness to make sacrifices for 
the son or the sons than for the daughters. And, of course, 
it is not only men educators who are responsible for this: 
it is quite amazing how often in Christian circles, when 
the discussion turns on the relation between husband and 
wife, Genesis 2 with its apparent sanction for a privileged 

4 Cf. Freud’s theory of the origin of conscience in his The I and the It; 
his language on the subject of religion, as for example in The Future of an 
Illusion, is only intelligible when this is first understood. 


Ph. Kohnstamm 


157 

position on the part of the husband is appealed to, and 
how seldom people call to mind Genesis 1, where clear 
expression is given to the co-ordination of the sexes. And 
further, the saying that “ in Christ Jesus there is neither 
male nor female ” (Gal. 3, 28) has as yet hardly received 
general recognition in Christian education, even where 
it has secured a “ theoretical ” recognition, which usually 
means one which carries with it no obligation to action. 

In contrast to this, there is the attempt of humanistic 
and idealistic education, here as elsewhere, to put equality 
in the place of equivalence, i.e. to act as if no distinctions 
existed between the sexes, and in particular to attempt to 
efface these distinctions by educational measures. Here 
too we are experiencing a decided reaction against this 
humanism, and that not only in countries with totalitarian 
tendencies, and here again our sole protection against the 
dangers of such one-sidedness lies in clear reflection upon 
the Christian commandment. And this reflection on the 
position of woman in the church is of exceptional impor¬ 
tance in the case of educational problems, because there 
is hardly another sphere in which she is so indispensable 
as here, and where her special charisma is so clearly in 
evidence. The church, however — at least in deed, if not 
in word — has only too little understood this truth. I 
referred above to this circumstance, and in the sequel I 
shall return to some gratifying exceptions. Here, I will 
only emphasize what I said in the previous section, that it 
is the daily study of psychological and pedagogical — or 
perhaps it would be better to say anthropological — ques¬ 
tions which has shown me the full significance of the fact 
that, even now in “ Christian ” circles especially, too com¬ 
monly the view of human nature which prevails is a patri¬ 
archal and not a Christian one. That indicates a further 
aspect of our problem to which we now turn. 


158 Church, Community, State and Education 

3. THE CHURCH’S TASK 

(i) A Science of Education as a Requirement of Faith. 
Almost every point in the preceding chapter shows that 
the traditional Christian education is lacking in the neces¬ 
sary insight. Certainly the good will which is so indis¬ 
pensable is often wanting as well; even a Christian edu¬ 
cator remains a sinful man who has to admit “ the good 
which I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, 
that I practice.” But so far as we know ourselves and our 
neighbor, we venture to say that probably this condition 
does not play as great a part in the sphere of education as 
in the rest of life. 

On the other hand, what we do find there, far more 
often, is a lack of insight into the disastrous consequences 
of definite types of action. The overaccentuation of man’s 
inability and nothingness mentioned above — in (d) — 
leads often in Christian, and especially in theological, 
circles to amazing cases of opposition to planned effort of a 
psychological and pedagogical nature. In this respect, I 
agree with what President Arlo Ayres Brown has said in the 
studies preliminary to this book: 

I wonder if, in addition to the secularization of life in the 
Christian community, another element in the crisis is not that 
the Christian community lacks confidence in the educational 
method, and for that reason refuses to take sufficient pains to 
improve its educational materials and procedures. 

I would go even further and assert that no small part 
of the secularization about us is the outcome of this refusal. 
Is it not only too easy to understand that a new generation 
is growing up which knows nothing of trustful obedience, 
if it has never been able to get to know Jesus Christ, or — 
and this perhaps is even worse — has merely taken over 
a correct doctrine about him, without ever meeting him 


Ph. Kohnstamm 


159 

himself? The fact that a very great part of our immediate 
environment attaches to the terms used in the Gospel a 
completely different meaning from the one intended, puts 
this beyond question . 5 

This means that I cannot follow President Brown when 
he goes on to say: “ If so, the Christian needs to learn from 
the Communists and Fascists how ideals can be made 
effective in the community.” 

I am convinced that we can only learn from the study of 
Communist and Fascist methods — and, for that reason, 
we ought not to cease studying them — how not to go to 
work. For these methods could not exist — although per¬ 
haps their adherents would wish it were otherwise — 
without continuous incitement and instigation of hate and 
resentment against our neighbor, in so far as he does not 
belong to our party, our nation, or our race. Such meth¬ 
ods are acts of violence, even if it is only a question of 
“ psychological ” application. But Jesus Christ does not 
teach us to use violence on our neighbor, not even with 
the help of psychological technique. Psychology, like 
every other science, remains a gift of God only where it 
has learned to give up ruling and to serve in humility. 
For it is, of course, a gift of God, and I am in complete 
agreement with Prof. Smith when he says: 

Unfortunately, the church today seems to many to have cre¬ 
ated an unnecessary conflict in the minds of its members by 
failing to welcome and assimilate the vast store of new knowl¬ 
edge with which modern science has enriched our lives. She 
seems hesitant and suspicious in her attitude towards the newer 
sciences of personality and of social relationships. She does 
not seem conscious of the profound spiritual significance of 
modern psychology’s contribution toward the cure of souls. 

5 See on this the excellent remarks of Delekat in the Preface to his trans¬ 
lation of Romans above cited (Quelle und Meyer, Leipzig, 1928). 


160 Church, Community, State and Education 

But what are the reasons for this attitude? I see two 
reasons, externally apparently very different, though pos¬ 
sibly they are ultimately derived from the same source. 
The first is a certain conservatism, a confidence in intui¬ 
tion and tradition as opposed to what is consciously and 
deliberately planned, and is, therefore, suspected as savor¬ 
ing of a superficial rationalism. Certainly this negative 
attitude is quite intelligible. Far too often has the attempt 
been made, in the name of some sort of “ science,” to im¬ 
pose on church people as unquestionable truths all sorts 
of uncritically accepted ideas which happen to be in the 
air. Too often has some intellectual infirmity covered its 
nakedness with the prophet’s mantle of genuine science. 
The really scientific attitude of mind presupposes an in¬ 
tellectual mobility, a faculty for thinking things all over 
again, such as one cannot demand of the vast majority 
even of church people. If, therefore, this demand of 
scientific study of education is made, and especially if it 
is insisted on in a spirit contrary to that of love, it is only 
too plain that such a procedure merely provokes opposi¬ 
tion. Of course, with all this the church of all places 
should never forget that God’s revelation does not take the 
way of ecstasy but of understanding (1 Cor. 14); that the 
true Logos is Christ, and Christ the true Logos. 

Still worse, of course, is it when these and similar notions 
belong to the foundation on which a theological system 
is erected. This view was formerly often the ruling one in 
pietistic circles. And in the rejection, not only of psy¬ 
chology, but of every attempt to construct any Christian 
view of science, this attitude seems to have assumed a 
fresh form in modern theology. This is all the more 
remarkable, because to the theologian of all people it must 
be clear that what he is concerned with is not faith itself, 
but just theology, i.e. a scientific treatment of faith. 


Ph. Kohnstamm 


161 


It cannot, of course, be the aim of this paper to enter 
more closely into this weighty problem of what a Christian 
view of science is, and how it can be attained; that inquiry 
belongs to other parts of the ecumenical work. 

Here, I would only like to dispose of an obvious mis¬ 
understanding. My idea of a Christian view of science is 
not affected by the doubts which Wiesner has raised in 
his admirable contribution on the problem of social in¬ 
stitutions and the law of nature against, for example, a 
“ Christian sociology ” and that for two reasons. In the 
first place, because there he is challenging a type of science 
which wants to exclude the historically conditioned and 
claims to reach results which are valid universally for all 
periods, countries, and nations. Such a demand, however, 
is only possible if one’s starting-point is a theory of ideas 
and of knowledge which rests on Platonic and Aristotelian 
metaphysics or on the Pantheism of the Renaissance, views 
which rule even present-day thought to a great extent. 
It is incompatible with a type of thinking, which always 
is aware of the fullness of creation, and does not explain 
away the differences as unessential. In the second place, 
such a “ science,” as Wiesner rightly points out, derives 
its norms from reason and not from revelation; i.e. it 
builds upon a foundation quite other than that which is 
laid in the Bible. For there can really be no doubt that 
from the biblical point of view man does not create norms 
nor does he find them “ in the inner light,” but that he 
knows them by revelation in Christ. 

But, provided the term is understood to include these 
assumptions, not only is there meaning in speaking of a 
" Christian approach to science,” but this Christian ap¬ 
proach is the only real and true one. To hold oneself at 
Christ’s service and in this service to investigate the prob¬ 
lems of this world does not mean to import human preju- 


162 Church, Community, State and Education 

dices into facts, but it means that one has won the key 
which opens the way to a true interpretation of the per¬ 
ceived and the given. It ought to be superfluous to em¬ 
phasize that in saying this I do not deny the value of what 
has been added to our knowledge in the last centuries by 
science, starting from other assumptions. Quite the re¬ 
verse; it seems to me that Christianity should be pro¬ 
foundly ashamed that these gifts have been far richer than 
the contributions which have been forthcoming within 
the sphere of the empirical church. But what has been 
found thus is and remains a fragment in another and 
deeper sense than that in which all thinking in this aeon 
must be fragmentary. And even where these fragments 
seem to fit in easier to a whole than in Christian vision — 
as in the theories of enlightenment, of evolutionism, and 
Darwinism, in the economic theory of man as homo eco- 
nomicus, and also in certain findings of modern psy¬ 
chology, especially of psychoanalysis — it is always a case 
of overhasty and therefore shortsighted generalization and 
abstraction, the untruth of which must come to light 
sooner or later. For One alone is the Way and the Truth, 
who remains such everywhere and for all time. 

This view has a twofold significance for the problem of 
Christian education. For Christian education, in the 
proper sense, is only possible on the basis of the Christian 
view of human nature. And this view must be renewed 
and regained in continual scientific work. If we have a 
task in God’s service, it is worth all our attention, especially 
in intense and systematic thinking. A study of person¬ 
ality, its willing, feeling, and thinking, is needed for all 
questions of character formation, i.e. the help which adult 
and more mature persons can give to younger and not 
fully-developed ones. 

But there is yet another connection between science and 


Ph. Kohnstamm 


163 

education. Instruction, of course, does not cover the 
whole field of education, but it is an important part of it. 
In the last resort, however, all instruction leads to ques¬ 
tions of Weltanschauung } which cannot be left unan¬ 
swered. And the way in which these questions are an¬ 
swered may seriously hinder and injure. This means that 
genuine Christian instruction — and this applies just as 
much to biblical instruction in the stricter sense as to 
that in any other sphere — demands the utilization of all 
the results of relevant Christian thinking. Here the very 
best is no more than good enough. Certainly there are 
distinctions of degree, conditioned by circumstances of 
various kinds, in the first place, by the subject one is teach¬ 
ing and the age of the pupils. The more remote from life 
the subject, the less will be its influence on central deci¬ 
sions. So that instruction in mathematics will be much 
less affected by them than that in biology, and this again 
less than that in history and literature. On the other 
hand, a form of instruction which is so central as biblical 
instruction raises far less intricate questions for the teach¬ 
er’s reflection and training when the teaching is done at 
the level of the child, than in the case of youth. 

(j) The Education of Educators . Only now have we 
reached a standpoint which commands such a wide view 
that we can speak of the church’s task and then of the state’s 
task in education. But, at this point, we shall again fall into 
ambiguities unless we bear in mind Oldham’s warning: 

When action of the church is proposed, it is always necessary 
to ask by what persons it is intended to be carried out. Lack of 
clearness on this point means evasion of responsibility. Ac¬ 
tion by the church may in practice mean several entirely dis¬ 
tinct things. It may mean action imposed or recommended by 
the authorities of the church. It may, on the other hand, be 
intended to refer primarily to action by the clergy. In this 
case, a further distinction has to be made, i.e. whether what 


164 Church, Community, State and Education 

they do is done in their capacity as ministers and office-bearers 
of the church or whether they are acting as individuals and 
private citizens. Or again, the action intended may mean ac¬ 
tion by the Christian laity, either in the faithful discharge as 
Christians of the duties of their vocation, or as associating 
themselves for the achievement of particular social and politi¬ 
cal ends, the pursuit of which they believe to be demanded by 
loyalty to the Christian profession. When the laity so act, they 
act, or ought to act, as members of the church, though not as 
its official representatives. All these forms of action are quite 
different from one another, and failure to distinguish between 
them and the unreflective use of a general term “ church,” to 
cover wholly distinct forms of action, has perhaps been one of 
the principal hindrances in the way of a true and fruitful un¬ 
derstanding of the functions of the church in the social and 
political spheres. 

Following these directions, therefore, I will go on to 
speak briefly, without raising any claim to completeness, 
of the responsibility of the most important categories of 
members of the church who are called to take part in 
education: viz. parents, youth leaders, professional teach¬ 
ers in the various types of schools, and official teachers of 
the church. 

I mention the parents first, because their responsibility 
for education appears first in the child’s life and is more 
deeply anchored than any other in the act of baptism. 
But also because they are and always remain the child’s 
most important and most influential teachers; apart from 
a few exceptional cases, it is with them that the initiative 
rests for the child’s baptism. And this is still the case even 
in our age of secularization and the accompanying loosen¬ 
ing of family ties. 

To be sure, in our secularized world, the opinion often 
prevails that education is primarily a matter of intellectual 
education, and, therefore, of the school. Unfortunately, 
this opinion is to be found even among the members of 
the church. 


Ph. Kohnstamm 


165 

So we must strongly emphasize the truth that all who 
are responsible for education derive their authority from 
the parents only, or, in particular exceptional cases, as a 
substitute for parental authority. Since this fact, as is 
attested again and again by the Bible, is grounded in God’s 
order for human life, the influence of the family for good 
and evil alike is more powerful than any other human in¬ 
fluence. The fact that even in Bolshevist Russia the years 
of early childhood are entrusted to education within the 
family secures for this influence the most effective sphere 
of action. For we know today — in opposition to the 
opinions which used to be widespread — that precisely 
these years of early childhood are of a significance the 
consequences of which, so far as we can see, can be demon¬ 
strated at almost every stage of life. This powerful influ¬ 
ence is at work even where, as in the English public school 
system, boarding school education has an importance 
rarely to be met with on the Continent. Of course, I can¬ 
not here enter into all the great questions of family educa¬ 
tion; as I remarked at the beginning, the problem which 
faces us in these studies is not that of church and education, 
but that of the relation between church, community, and 
state in the realm of education. What has been said here 
is sufficient to justify the conclusion that the church — 
meaning by that primarily the authorities of the church — 
must champion the rights of parents to educate their chil¬ 
dren and resist the encroachments of the state. But she has 
more to do than that; the church — meaning by this, now, 
the laity and clergy, the congregations and their leaders — 
must take her educational task far more seriously than 
hitherto. Under the influence of the secularizing process 
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, even in church 
circles, the responsibility for education was in the main 
relinquished or actually handed over to the school; which 
in most cases meant the state. In part — and this I think 


166 Church, Community, State and Education 

is especially true of the Anglo-Saxon countries — such an 
attitude was due to the still unchallenged presupposition 
that “ general ” culture and the foundations on which it 
rested were really Christian. So that we can regard it 
even as a gain when this certainty, accepted too uncriti¬ 
cally, breaks down. For then parents and other educators 
again become aware of their full responsibility. 

Perhaps we see this influence most clearly at work in 
present-day Germany. The primer for the use of mothers 
issued by the mothers’ section of the German Evangelical 
women’s auxiliary lies before me as I write. It offers to 
millions of German mothers direct guidance as to how 
they can prepare themselves for what is central in their 
educational task, now that it has become clear to them 
that they cannot entrust this task to others, but must them¬ 
selves take it in hand. 

That illustrates the second point which must be men¬ 
tioned; education, although perhaps its most important 
part takes place unconsciously and involuntarily, must 
not be allowed to go unprepared as a whole. Just as it is 
not the case that faith is only life and not doctrine, so 
education cannot merely draw on intuition, but there 
must be an education of educators. 

To this indirect work for youth through work for the 
parents, especially for mothers, those circles seem to me 
particularly called which hitherto have been mainly en¬ 
gaged in the service of direct work for youth. In the first 
place, because they can speak to parents out of their knowl¬ 
edge of youth; in the second, because in the case of youth- 
work there is always the danger that it may rather 
strengthen than remove those tensions between the two 
generations which almost regularly appear, unless a genu¬ 
ine relation of confidence obtains between the home and 
those engaged in youth-work; also because in this sphere 


Ph. Kohnstamm 


167 

almost everywhere a great army of fellow-workers (women 
especially) is to be found in greater numbers than any¬ 
where else. Further, because a claim for freedom in such 
work on the part of the church for young people and for 
parents can be much more firmly established, even where 
the state shows totalitarian tendencies, than in the case 
of the school. And, finally, because direct work for youth 
does to a much greater extent than the school, at least 
where this is not a boarding school, affect the whole man 
and not that one side of him which is intellectual. So 
that it stands close to the spirit of family education and 
can exercise stronger influences than those of the school. 
Certainly the school ought not to be any mere place of in¬ 
struction, as it was only too often in the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury, at least on the Continent and particularly in the uni¬ 
versities and higher-grade schools. Just because the school 
exists not simply to pass on knowledge and technical skill, 
the training of teachers is of the utmost importance, much 
more important than the often so hotly-contested question 
of the school curriculum. The last position, therefore, 
in the sphere of education which a church that has been 
forced into a defensive attitude has to maintain against a 
state with totalitarian tendencies, is that of collaboration 
in teacher-training. 

But inasmuch as the school, although it must not by 
any means be a mere place for instruction and training, 
still finds in this more special sphere its main task, only a 
positivistic overestimate of the intellectual and technical 
elements can regard it as the place kat exochen in which 
education is carried on. The problem of education ex¬ 
tends much further and lies much deeper than that of the 
school. In all states and nations it is essential that this 
should be grasped; and wherever state and culture repre¬ 
sent a power alienated from the church and prohibiting a 


168 Church, Community, State and Education 

direct influence of the community on the school, this truth 
can provide both consolation and the courage to do what is 
possible in the way of education. 

The influence of the church’s professional teachers on 
education, and, therefore, their responsibility, are cer¬ 
tainly already considerable, as for example in what we con¬ 
tinue in many countries to call “ catechism ” instruction, 
although as an educational method the use of the cate¬ 
chism is very much out-of-date. But it seems to me quite 
clear that a great deal more might still be achieved here. 
This would happen, in the first place, if the office-bearers 
of the church were to concentrate much more deliberately 
than has been done hitherto on being teachers of teachers, 
i.e. of parents, youth-workers, and school staffs, or should 
that be necessary, teachers of the teachers of these teachers. 
For anyone who has an acquaintance with present-day 
educational science knows that there is a lack of those 
whose powers have been developed by a thorough train¬ 
ing. In the second place, this would be possible if they 
were far more aware than has been the case hitherto that 
this teaching-office in our day no longer devolves exclu¬ 
sively on those who have had a theological training. Our 
whole ecclesiastical organization is still to too great an 
extent dominated by the presupposition which went un¬ 
questioned in the Middle Ages that all intellectual train¬ 
ing outside of a small group of physicians and lawyers was 
theological. Here, again, we touch on the problem of 
whether a “ Christian ” type of science is possible, and 
again I must decline to go further into it. But let me, at 
any rate, express this conviction: that the church can only 
tackle the problem of the education of educators as it 
should be done when she definitely calls in the assistance 
not only of Christian theologians (for there are theolo¬ 
gians who are not Christians and who do not want to be 


Ph. Kohnstamm 169 

such), but also the Christian representatives of other 
sciences. 

(k) The State's Legal Claim to Education and its 
Limits. We have already recognized in (b) that the state 
has a claim to education. For we spoke there of the task 
of preparing the rising generation to meet the demands of 
the state. In fact, if the state, even the state whose govern¬ 
ment is not conscious whence its task is derived, has a task 
assigned to it by God — then the state must demand that 
education is such as to equip the rising generation to serve 
this task. Under the conditions of our present-day eco¬ 
nomic and cultural arrangements, this generally means 
that the state also provides the necessary means to this end, 
and at least exercises an oversight over the way in which 
these means are employed. For, in our present economic 
system, it is out of the question to entrust the education of 
the great masses of the people simply to private enterprise. 

At least the state exercises an oversight; it is not to 
be taken for granted that the state will itself organize 
educational associations, schools in the first place. As is 
shown by the essay of Morris, and also by the memoran¬ 
dum of the Dutch study-group, it is really quite conceiv¬ 
able, although not usual up to the present, that it should 
leave to others, such as the church or parents’ associations, 
the task of bringing up a generation of good and able citi¬ 
zens, because the church and parents stand so much nearer 
than it does to what is deepest and most central in human 
nature. The state must, therefore, confine itself to bring¬ 
ing up “ capable ” citizens, and not imagine that it has to 
bring up virtuous characters, for it cannot reach this goal 
with the means at its disposal, whatever may be the case so 
far as Christian education is concerned. 

Of course, if the state cannot discharge its task without 
capable citizens it is its duty to provide for something 


170 Church, Community, State and Education 

more than the production of intellectual, physical, and 
technical qualifications. When in circles which have 
wholly or in part come under the sway of secularization — 
(whether they still count themselves as belonging to the 
church or not, does not matter in this respect) — an ad¬ 
vancing individualism and intellectualism, or a senti¬ 
mental humanism, or the self-asserting notion of autonomy 
threatens to destroy the basis of all education by destroy¬ 
ing all authority, the state has not only the right, but also 
the duty, to intervene and itself to take in hand an educa¬ 
tion which will be something more than instruction and 
technical training. For there is no education which is 
not based on authority, and has not the community in 
view. 

If I am not greatly mistaken, these are some of the 
motives which make intelligible, though they do not jus¬ 
tify, the claims on education advanced by the totalitarian 
states, at least in Italy and Germany, and presumably in 
Russia as well. And it would do an injustice to the totali¬ 
tarian state were we to overlook the fact that in our age of 
secularization the state is often compelled to establish 
new bonds and norms, because the traditional Christian 
ones, on which the whole of European and American civi¬ 
lization rests, are in danger of breaking down. The em¬ 
pirical church has no right to complain of necessities for 
which she must bear part of the blame. 

But it belongs to the very nature of the totalitarian state 
that it knows no limits and, therefore, constantly oversteps 
its limits, invading the rights of other forms of community 
life even where they have given it no occasion to do so. 

To sum up: if the state, either deliberately or in point 
of fact, claims to be the sole educator, then the church — 
and this applies to the church as a whole, its office-bearers 
and all its members — can only answer with the most 


Ph. Kohnstamm 


171 

decided No! This problem is incomparably more impor¬ 
tant than that of school curricula and the establishment of 
schools. This is why all supporters of a really totalitarian 
state, from Plato to Fichte, and the present-day advocates 
of Communist and Fascist youth associations, begin at this 
point. 

This means that the controversy will more and more 
come to a head over this issue. Where the church is in a 
minority and the state is one in which the new heathenism 
prevails, it can acquiesce in any other demand made on it, 
even to the prohibition of public worship and evangelistic 
activity. Under certain circumstances, reverence for the 
powers that be, which indeed do not exist without God’s 
permission, may be carried as far as that. But when the 
state wants to usurp education — (I think the preceding 
discussion had made it clear enough that this is something 
quite different from a demand that certain items of knowl¬ 
edge which are indispensable or serviceable to the com¬ 
munity should be given to all its members) — the church 
can only answer: “We ought to obey God rather than 
man.” It is clear that in a state committed to the new 
heathenism this may lead to martyrdom. Up to the pres¬ 
ent, unless I am mistaken, even the Russian anti-God 
movement has not abrogated parental rights as such in 
education. 

But it is outside the scope of this paper, as of the writer’s 
qualifications, to examine what such a state of things 
would mean. 

At this point, the only fitting thing we can do is to pray 
that God may give to his church, the Una Sancta, strength, 
wisdom, and readiness, if part of her membership has to 
seek her help for such a purpose as this. 








THE EDUCATIONAL TASK OF THE 
CHURCH AT THE PRESENT TIME 






















> 



















% 







THE EDUCATIONAL TASK OF THE CHURCH 
AT THE PRESENT TIME 


This paper deals with the problem of education from the 
standpoint of the church. That is, we do not propose to 
treat the question scientifically as a problem in pure 
education, which would entail a consideration of the 
ideals that should inspire such an education and the pre¬ 
cise ways and means to bring it about. We propose rather 
to consider what are the educational duties imposed on 
the church by the situation actually in force in most Euro¬ 
pean countries today. At the outset it had better be said 
that the author is mainly concerned with conditions now 
prevailing in Germany, but an attempt will nevertheless 
be made to emphasize and pick out only those aspects 
which are typical of the culture prevalent throughout 
western Europe. For, in order to deal comprehensively 
with the educational situation, from the standpoint of the 
whole Christian world, it is necessary to have a profound 
insight into the inner changes which have taken place 
during the last two centuries, and are still taking place, in 
the soul of European man, so that one can see how far they 
impinge on Christian belief, and how far and in what way 
they confront the church with new duties. This may well 
be considered an impossible undertaking, and in any case 
such a reading of the present situation would be danger¬ 
ously exposed to error, and at best very imperfect. 

But what else can we do in an ecumenical inquiry such 
as ours? At any rate it would profit us little if we at¬ 
tempted to formulate a Christian ideal of education uni- 

175 


176 Church, Community, State and Education 

versally acceptable to all churches in all countries, or if 
we made isolated suggestions for the improvement of the 
Christian training of the younger generation at home and 
at school. Such an attempt would result in a purely aca¬ 
demic and rather useless piece of work, which could only 
achieve practical value if the state and society, as educa¬ 
tional agents, were willing to adopt and make use of our 
suggestions. For the church alone has not, in most coun¬ 
tries, the power to transform its proposals into practical 
politics. Totalitarian states constantly struggle to usurp 
the influence which Christianity, owing to its past, still 
exerts on education, especially in the schools. In other 
countries, the actual practical value of Christian education, 
as now carried on, is doubtful in the extreme. As against 
this it becomes increasingly clear that the development of 
western European culture makes the following questions all 
important. What value have the Christian faith and the 
church for the education of mankind? Is their glory not 
completely outworn, and is not the respect with which it 
is customary to surround them entirely due to the inertia 
resulting from an ancient tradition? What is their true sig¬ 
nificance, and cannot the educational value once ascribed 
to the Christian faith be much more effectively realized by 
the help of modern science and the methods of modern 
pedagogy? 

Once this state of affairs is grasped, the church is im- 
mediately faced with the question how far she may claim 
to be, not only one among many, but the truly decisive 
educational force without which modern man is heading 
for destruction and the present-day world is doomed to a 
painful process of disintegration. The fact that many 
people consider that the power of the church has long since 
been outgrown and superseded is partly due to the fact 
that she herself no longer clearly realizes the source of 


“X” 


i77 

her “ educative ” force or the origin of her real power. In 
order truly to understand wherein this power consists it is 
essential that the church should keep clearly in view her 
actual position in the modern world, and that she should 
endeavor to understand this situation in the light of the 
truth of Jesus Christ. It would be of little avail merely to 
break out into lamentations over the secularization of the 
modern world. The church herself is intimately con¬ 
nected by a thousand ties to the world around her. Only 
by accepting her own share of responsibility for the prob¬ 
lems and needs of the present day and by shouldering her 
part of the suffering can she hope to be of any use. She 
must keep clearly before her mind the bitter necessities not 
only those which constrain nations and society, but those 
to which every individual, in all his various relationships, 
is subject. She must openly admit her share of guilt, and 
must pray God that he will give her unity and strength, so 
that she may once more become that which she should al¬ 
ways be, namely, “ the salt of the earth.” 

1 . THE PRESENT CRISIS OF CIVILIZATION AND THE 
EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS ARISING FROM IT 

When we wish to express in one word the significant 
character of the present day, we say “ we are living through 
a crisis of civilization.” But what is such a crisis? The 
situation may be considered from varied aspects because 
it appears in many quarters. Science, or the general in¬ 
tellectual life of the day, is at a crisis. There is an eco¬ 
nomic crisis. Democracy is at a crisis. Education has 
reached a crisis, and finally faith is at a crisis. 

If we try to think this situation through from the educa¬ 
tional standpoint, we do not mean that a crisis has been 
brought about mainly because of the insolubility of cer¬ 
tain educational problems, or that this is its real cause. 


178 Church, Community, State and Education 

The crisis can equally well be regarded from the point of 
view of the general intellectual life of our time, its eco¬ 
nomics, or even its politics. However, in each case, if we 
probe sufficiently deeply, we shall find that the question 
of the ultimate certainties on which our faith is founded 
will prove to be the goal towards which each avenue of 
approach leads. The problems that arise in the field of 
education have been placed in the forefront merely be¬ 
cause education happened to be the special subject chosen 
for Section IV of the Oxford Conference. The main 
points which spring to mind when the cultural crisis of 
the present day is considered from the educational aspect 
are as follows: 

(a) What in Essence is Meant by Education? — The 
question sounds purely academic, though actually nothing 
is further from the truth. For such a question does not 
even arise in times when men live surrounded and pro¬ 
tected by the bulwark of a firm faith and settled moral 
values. Such men educate without giving much thought 
to the meaning of education. Whenever such a question 
crops up, it is a sure sign that the community is uncertain 
of its right to assume a position of educational authority 
towards the coming generation. Have we the right to 
inculcate our ways of life and thought as expressed by our 
character and manner of life? Whenever men feel so 
uncertain, even if the doubt remains subconscious, of 
their right to educate, their uncertainty usually first mani¬ 
fests itself by increased educational activity. People take 
an exceptional interest in education; much is made of the 
great responsibility of schools and other educational in¬ 
stitutions; educational lectures are popular; new educa¬ 
tional methods are devised; new training establishments 
are founded; educational courses for those about to marry 
or for young parents are instituted, and so on. But very 


<< y *» 


179 

soon it becomes evident that though all this may be help¬ 
ful in individual cases, on the whole it may mean no more 
than that we are treating symptoms and not attacking the 
evil at its source. The questions: What actually consti¬ 
tutes education? What is the best way to educate? receive 
so many answers and assume such protean shapes that the 
condition of the patient and human existence in general 
become progressively worse. There are too many doctors 
prescribing too many cures. The further question: Has 
the community in which we live, such as it is, even the 
right to educate? is usually not openly stated. But that 
is the root question. The church should therefore take 
warning, and not let herself be led astray when she is told 
that, in order to keep abreast of the times, she should adopt 
as many new educational doctrines as possible, together 
with their corresponding methods. Her task is rather to 
insist on the root question: Why is your conscience so un¬ 
easy face to face with the young generation whom it is your 
duty to educate? Ambiguity is always the sign of a guilty 
conscience. 

(b) What is the Highest Aim of Education? — At this 
point we come up against the problem raised by the cur¬ 
rent view that all philosophies of life are merely relative, 
an attitude which is so very characteristic of the present 
crisis. It is fortunate that the clash of differing concep¬ 
tions of life does not in every country take the form of a 
political struggle sometimes even leading to bloodshed. 
Where this does not happen, these problems do not stir up 
the same intensity of feeling; and the schools are saved 
from becoming the sport of politics. But that does not 
mean that all is well. For public life in which the young 
man grows up offers him such a host of philosophies, re¬ 
ligions, and opinions that he hardly knows which to adopt. 
None of them has the binding force of a moral law. Even 


180 Church, Community, State and Education 

when school and public life are not entirely dominated by 
politics, he is still exposed to such a multiplicity of views of 
life that when the heavy hand of fate or even of guilt de¬ 
scends upon him, youth will, according to temperament, 
either be driven to desperate courses, or will adopt a shal¬ 
low sophistication, or else seek the meaning of human 
existence in mere physical activity. 

(c) In Whose Hands Does the Supreme Educational 
Authority Lief — This question does not ask, who is re¬ 
sponsible for providing either the external machinery by 
means of financial grants, or the purely intellectual curricu¬ 
lum of the public system of education. That differs in dif¬ 
ferent countries. In some the state shoulders the main bur¬ 
den, in others responsibility rests on free associations of 
people in the community. These differences certainly pro¬ 
duce important differences in organization, but from our 
point of view they are not of decisive importance, since the 
question for us is: Who, at the present day, still possesses 
real educational authority? Without authority true edu¬ 
cation does not exist because without authority there can 
be no true freedom. But at the present day where are we 
to find the authority which exerts a truly compelling effect 
on a young man’s soul? In his home? In some cases, 
thank God, this is still true, but in many no longer. In 
his school? Yes — this is still often the case — but for 
how long? In his professional or trade associations? 
Mostly not, and certainly not in the sense in which this 
was true in the Middle Ages. The church? The state? 
The demand for an authority which will exert a truly 
binding effect on the inner being of man, and the search 
for genuine authority, can be found today in all layers of 
society. It is the question. What Clarke tells us of the 
mind of English youth bears this out, and similar examples 
can easily be drawn from other European countries. 


These three considerations by no means exhaust all that 
could be said about the present crisis of civilization from 
the educational point of view. But they must suffice for 
the present. For it is necessary to show their deeper causes 
as well as their practical results. 

2 . CAUSE AND EFFECT OF THE UNIVERSAL CULTURAL 
AND EDUCATIONAL CRISIS 

It was said earlier in the paper that the crisis of our 
present civilization takes many forms, but in its every 
aspect, whether it is considered from the point of view of 
economics, politics, intellectual life or education, the prob¬ 
lem leads us to the ultimate ground and certainty of our 
belief. In order to develop this thesis in its completeness 
it would be necessary to survey the whole process of secu¬ 
larization which European civilization has undergone since 
the sixteenth century. It would be necessary to show how 
intellectual life, whether in the domain of science, poetry 
or the plastic arts, gradually deserted the spheres of Chris¬ 
tian thought and feeling; how in politics the Christian 
hope in the Kingdom of God was transformed into an ex¬ 
pectation of the coming of a temporal kingdom of God on 
earth, so much so that the European bourgeoisie conceived 
the ideal of a perfect state, Socialism dreamt of the ideal of 
a socialistic state of the future. In the nineteenth century 
rapid industrialization loosened the ties of village life and 
of the smaller communities which were so closely bound up 
with the life of the church. The larger towns were filled 
with vast hordes of people with which the church, with its 
parochial life adapted to the needs of small parishes, was 
quite unable to keep pace; the educational influence of 
Christian custom was gradually frittered away, and one 
wave of emancipation followed another. We do not pro¬ 
pose to give a detailed account of these processes. In any 


1 82 Church, Community, State and Education 

case such a description would only evoke a superficial in¬ 
tellectual assent, and would disregard the inner effect of 
this universal process of secularization. 

Our human existence is rooted in history. That is why 
the problem of the secularization of life raises the ques¬ 
tion: Who is responsible for the distress which this secu¬ 
larization has brought in its train? It is not much help 
to explain to human beings that this or that particular 
effect was produced by such and such a cause. They are 
not greatly interested, because that will not relieve them 
of the dire and pressing consequences which this seculariza¬ 
tion has had on their lives. The ordinary man in the street 
is usually ignorant of how and why the situation in which 
he finds himself has been evolved by slow historical proc¬ 
esses, nevertheless at certain crises in his life he becomes 
acutely conscious of the resultant stresses. For instance, he 
is well aware of the discrepancy which exists between what 
he hears and reads, in newspaper articles and in the official 
speeches of ministers, about the universal desire for peace 
among nations, about the necessity of surmounting the eco¬ 
nomic crisis, the desirability of maintaining and increasing 
the standard of life; but his daily life brings him face to 
face with quite another reality. What he experiences is a 
great absence of peace throughout the world, he finds that 
the particular comer of the world at his disposal has 
shrunk, and looks as though it is shrinking still further. 
Moreover, he has discovered that nothing in this world is 
entirely secure. Inflation may have destroyed his property, 
deflation raises the cost of living. How uncertain is 
money! Why save? In what or in whom can he place his 
trust? Whom shall he believe? There is no longer any 
institution which commands universal trust. The church 
is considered superfluous; her faith an outworn creed. 
But do the institutions which have superseded the church 


X 


183 

possess his confidence? Man behaves as though he were a 
44 freethinker/’ but what does this freedom of thought 
amount to in reality? It simply stands for scepticism and 
an inner lack of balance — one as desolating as the other, 
whether it expresses itself as mordant wit or a brutal lack of 
taste. Social custom no longer exercises any binding con¬ 
trol, and this absence of restraint is particularly noticeable 
in the relations between the sexes. The simplest solution 
of that particular problem appears to consist in pretending 
the problem does not exist, although in actual fact it causes 
much suffering, especially among women. Oft repeated 
disillusionment produces once again a feeling of antago¬ 
nism between the sexes, a form of hatred which has pecul¬ 
iarly malignant and life-destroying power. Men despise 
women; and women despise men. The sanctity of mar¬ 
riage is trodden underfoot, the number of fleeting sexual 
44 affairs ” increases; marriage itself is often no more than a 
legalized temporary union. This inevitably leads to the 
gravest educational difficulties among the younger genera¬ 
tion and produces conflicts and neuroses of all kinds. 

All this makes man deeply dissatisfied with his life — 
a dissatisfaction which expresses itself in endless grievances 
and complaints. That is why people nowadays are so easily 
stirred politically; for it must not be supposed that pure 
political ardor drives such countless millions into the 
arms of the more violent political parties. Heaven alone 
knows how much absolutely unpolitical and purely do¬ 
mestic and business irritation finds an outlet in this way. 
To put it in a nutshell: modem man finds the world a 
frightening place. It has become too small for him. This 
does not mean that in itself the world is too small, but it 
does mean that love has departed from it. For that is 
precisely the consequence of the secularization of the 
world, namely, that love is lacking. That is what causes 


184 Church, Community, State and Education 

railing, anger, bitterness, hatred, crime, and the insistent 
demand for the use of force. 

3. THE ATTEMPT TO FIND A POLITICAL SOLUTION 
FOR THE CULTURAL AND EDUCATIONAL CRISIS 

Zenkowsky is right when he says that the totalitarian 
state has not merely been caused by an educational crisis, 
but that it is also partly the result of political, economic, in¬ 
tellectual, and other conditions. Wherever the totalita¬ 
rian state is actually in being, the relations of church and 
state immediately change. In any discussion of such things 
care must be taken to avoid the assumption that there 
exists, so to speak, one normal or ideal standard. The 
church possesses certain fundamental articles of belief, 
which she must uphold in her dealings with the state, and 
for which she must, if necessary, be prepared to fight. 
From this conflict there results an actual relation between 
the two, which may last for a certain length of time, but 
which will always remain to some degree unstable. It 
would, therefore, be incorrect to describe the situation be¬ 
tween the church of Jesus Christ and the state as “ normal ” 
in a liberal and abnormal in a totalitarian country. The 
position of the church in a liberal state is by no means 
“ normal,” for even liberalism acts as a check on the gospel 
of the Christian church. From the standpoint of liberal 
politics, Christianity appears merely as one conception 
of life and the world — one among many — and this atti¬ 
tude cannot be reconciled with the saying that in Christ 
alone can salvation be found, and that the church is the 
sole guardian of Christ’s truth. It is only necessary to con¬ 
sider how low the credit and influence of the church fell 
during the liberal epoch to have striking proof of this. On 
the other hand, in the case of the totalitarian state with its 
claim to absolute authority even in matters of faith, the 


u -v >» 


i8 5 

position of the church, measured by New Testament stand¬ 
ards, becomes much more normal. For once again she is 
becoming a suffering and a militant church. This may be 
painful for individual Christians, but it is good for the 
church. 

At this stage, one should, as a Christian, refrain as much 
as possible from all merely human hope and fear; one 
should not even try and assess what is normal and what 
abnormal, but should confine oneself to obeying the dic¬ 
tates of one’s faith. If the church is faced by a totalitarian 
state she must not regard that state as the result of human 
arbitrariness. For the processes involved go far beyond 
the possibilities of merely human choice or the decisions 
of individual men. The church must take a firm stand 
and react energetically against any attempt on the part of 
the totalitarian state to substitute for God a merely worldly 
ideal, to erect its own laws in place of God’s laws and 
to replace the figure of Christ by a human figure. But it is 
equally essential that she should recognize as a simple 
matter of fact that the modern state cannot fulfill its duty 
if it does not, somehow or other, solve the problem of how 
to control and lead the mass of the people. The way in 
which individual states solve this problem may be very dif¬ 
ferent, and politically speaking it may be of the greatest im¬ 
portance under the aegis of what political ideal this hap¬ 
pens, but for the church this is not, and never should be, 
the decisive factor. The church should never let herself 
be harnessed to the wagon of this or that particular brand 
of political totalitarianism, but should remember that the 
urge towards totalitarianism, which appears to a greater or 
lesser extent in all countries where the proletariat has be¬ 
come a major problem, is the ideal in which people who 
have long since forgotten all about Christianity and the 
Christian ideal of society first seek the solution of their 


186 Church, Community, State and Education 

social crisis. It is in that ideal that they see the only hope 
of putting a stop to the progressive disintegration of their 
social and political life. Their instinctive reply to the 
question: What power can supply the necessary unifying 
influence to restore order once more in the present chaotic 
condition of human existence? is: “ Why, of course, the 
state.” It is only a very small minority who realize that 
the state, with the political machinery at its disposal, can 
at most set up only an outer system of law and order, but 
that the inner reconstruction of life is bound up with the 
re-emergence of the power of the church. Certain experi¬ 
ences through which the totalitarian state (including the 
people under its rule) are bound to go, are, therefore, nec¬ 
essary in order to increase the number of those who realize 
the very real value of the Christian faith and the church. 
It is possible that a new and stable balance between church 
and state can only arise as the result of the conflict forced 
on the church by the totalitarian state, a state which is, 
after all, merely a counterfeit of the church of Jesus Christ. 
This experience and this conflict occurs directly the totali¬ 
tarian state tries to guide and control, not only the outer, 
but the inner life of man. These experiences are, there¬ 
fore, part of the new “ political education.” 

A state based on totalitarian principles is by its very na¬ 
ture deeply concerned with education. That is obvious. 
Every purely intellectual system of thought considers that 
a planned education is the best way of influencing hu¬ 
manity in favor of a political ideal which alone is con¬ 
sidered good and right. This obviously entails a very 
comprehensive conception of education. The methods of 
political education include not only schools of every type 
and grade, but all methods of influencing public opinion. 
If these methods are rigidly enforced, and the inner gravi¬ 
tation of the mass of the people is still towards totalitarian- 


“ X ” 187 

ism, their success is surprising, especially when contrasted 
with liberal states where signs of disintegration are allowed 
to appear openly. 

As time goes on, however, the following question arises: 
Is it possible to influence the whole population of a coun¬ 
try exclusively in the direction of a single ideal? The idea 
that this was necessary for the “ establishment of the king¬ 
dom of reason,” that in order to achieve this a new kind of 
education and numerous schools would be required, and 
that if need be this system would have to be imposed upon 
the population by force, has already been expressed by 
Fichte. In his lectures on the doctrine of the state, given 
in the year 1812, he taught that “ humanity, as a refrac¬ 
tory entity, ought certainly to be forced, quite ruthlessly, 
whether it understands it or not, to conform to the sover¬ 
eignty of law and to the higher truth. This compulsion, 
however, must be inseparably connected with an institu¬ 
tion, in order that this higher truth may become the posses¬ 
sion of the whole community. The views of the founder 
ought, in the course of time, to become the views of all, 
with no exceptions. Only through the latter will the for¬ 
mer become legal.” “ The compulsive state, therefore, is 
the school by means of which the kingdom of reason, based 
on truth accepted by all, will be established.” 

This is no isolated expression of Fichte’s ideas. In his 
second Address to the German Nation he says in a similar 
vein. “ The new education must consist essentially in this, 
that it completely destroys freedom of will in the soul which 
it undertakes to cultivate, and produces, on the contrary, 
strict necessity in the decisions of the will, the opposite 
being impossible. Such a will can henceforth be relied on 
with confidence and certainty.” Without tracing the in¬ 
fluence of Fichte in any special way it is quite possible to 
establish as a fact that, at the latest, about the end of the 


188 Church, Community, State and Education 

nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century the 
propagandist activity of the Socialist parties made an in¬ 
creasing practice of mental terrorism. Here already we see 
the methods of moral and economic pressure actually at 
work. Indeed, in Socialist circles one of the most fruitful 
subjects of discussion has been: How far is it right to go in 
the application of such methods of terrorism? Thus it 
would seem as though idealism were fated to develop into 
terrorism in course of time. Terrorism is a blend of per¬ 
suasive propaganda and open or concealed threats. If, 
however, idealism is compelled to resort to such measures 
in order to be able to assert and maintain its own existence, 
the question then arises whether both are not inwardly and 
emotionally opposed to one another? Finally this leads to 
a purely technical problem: To what extent is it techni¬ 
cally possible to supervise permanently the outlook of a 
nation composed of millions of human beings? The per¬ 
ception that this is not possible, and thus, that it is impos¬ 
sible to “ annihilate ” the free will of man, is obscured at 
the present time, because the technical aids which the con¬ 
temporary state has at its disposal make it possible for its 
organs to have a kind of omnipresence which is feared far 
more than the divine omnipresence. But the use of these 
methods almost always produces in those who are subjected 
to them the fundamental destruction of their belief in the 
correctness and the inner right of the ideal which is being 
forced upon them. Thus the ideal which is enforced by 
the totalitarian state is confronted by an inner barrier be¬ 
yond which it cannot penetrate. 

Further, a philosophy of life which aims at producing 
certain political results is unable to give an answer to many 
important questions of life. Man is not only a political 
unit, but each individual has his own fate to bear, his own 
joys and sorrows, fears and anxieties. What use will a po- 


n y »» 


189 

litical system of philosophy be to him when death knocks 
at his door, when he is beset with professional worries or 
difficulties in his married life, or when his children take 
the wrong turning? 

Church and state are bound to come into conflict, for 
whenever the concept of a totalitarian state is pushed to its 
logical conclusion, the attempt is made to replace Christi¬ 
anity by a new religion. This leads to a direct attack on 
the Christian faith and the church. It must be freely ad¬ 
mitted that in its present condition the church, in many of 
its aspects, is simply asking for such criticism; and should, 
therefore, see in it the scourge of God punishing her for 
her own misdoings. If, however, she recognizes in the as¬ 
sault made on her by the world a call to repentance, and if 
she obeys the call, such attacks cannot in the long run do 
her much harm; though, on the other hand, they may do 
serious harm to those whom they provoke to merely 
thoughtless and superficial counter-criticism, seeing only 
the mote in their brother’s eye and forgetting the beam 
that is in their own. Every conflict in which the weapons 
of moral slander are used becomes a desperate and hopeless 
issue, wherein much is destroyed but little built up. To 
give mankind a new faith, instead of the poisonous fruit of 
malicious criticism, would mean to realize the kingdom of 
God on earth by means of political organization and politi¬ 
cal power — an attempt reserved for the followers of anti- 
Christ. 

A struggle between the totalitarian state and the church, 
if conducted by such means, must result in a loss of author¬ 
ity for the state. That is the worst of it; state prisons are 
not in themselves disgraceful; they only become so because 
of the sort of people who have to be imprisoned in them 
and because of the real crimes they have committed. It is 
a dangerous thing to use them as establishments for politi- 


190 Church, Community, State and Education 

cal education. For brute force, even when it threatens 
death, is in the long run the most powerless thing there is. 

If, therefore, the attempt of the totalitarian state to solve 
by educational means the problem of the universal crisis 
of civilization is doomed to failure, what then? As soon as 
this question is given serious consideration, the stage is at 
last reached when it becomes possible really to grasp the 
inner and fundamental meaning of the present crisis, and 
to recognize that it is in essence a crisis of faith. For the 
root of the matter is as follows: The process of seculariza¬ 
tion which our present civilization has undergone during 
the past several hundred years attempted to substitute for 
the transcendent God, who revealed himself in Christ, a 
this-worldly power (namely, the spirit of the universe); 
and it sought to find the unity of God and man, not in the 
person of Jesus Christ, but in the nature of man himself 
(i.e. the idea of humanity); it hoped for the realization of 
the kingdom of God on earth through the ideal future state 
or the perfection of human society (secularized eschatolo¬ 
gies) . The ideologies current at the time of European 
liberalism and humanism represent point by point the 
transference of the teaching and the belief of the church 
into the realm of temporal power. And that is true not 
only of these political views, but also of the philosophical 
concepts underlying the totalitarian state. The difference 
between liberal and totalitarian ways of thought consists 
mainly in the fact that an adherent of the former type 
of liberal humanism really believed that his ideas corre¬ 
sponded to the true meaning of life as shown in history; 
and that these ideas would, therefore, come to pass of them¬ 
selves if only mankind could once properly grasp them. 
But modern man who thinks on totalitarian lines has lost 
any such belief. Karl Marx still had such a faith; Lenin no 
longer possessed it. As a consequence, an effort is made to 


tt y »» 


191 

substitute a much more concrete ideal for the far-off ideals 
of liberal humanism, tainted as these are by Christian 
thought; and secondly, since men no longer believe that 
the truth of these ideals will of necessity bring about their 
realization, an attempt is made to bring this more limited 
ideal into existence by the use of force. Totalitarian 
thought conceals the secret doubt that the course of history 
possesses in reality no inner meaning which man may rec¬ 
ognize, other than that imposed on it by his own will. It is 
this that creates the superman — that is, a man who pro¬ 
poses to achieve everything by his own strength, which both 
Christians and humanists have always felt implied convul¬ 
sive effort. 

But it is at this very point that Christians should beware 
of merely destructive criticism. They should rather recog¬ 
nize that this phenomenon has a certain inevitability about 
it. A world dominated by humanistic and liberal views 
reveals its essential nature as loveless, cold, narrow, violent, 
and brutal. And the world will retain this character until 
mankind realizes once more the meaning of the verse in the 
Gospel of St. John 16, 33. “ In the world ye shall have 
tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the 
world.” They must learn that God stands in another cate¬ 
gory than all the values of this world, and must acknowl¬ 
edge his personal revelation in Jesus Christ. They must 
find their peace in belief in him — a peace which is not of 
this world. They must come to know the fellowship of 
love which can only be realized where the spirit of Christ 
reigns. All of which leads to the fact that though, as far 
as modern man is concerned, the church of Jesus Christ 
seemed to have disappeared from the realm of everyday 
life, they must once more experience it as a living reality 
penetrating from the life beyond into this life. Mankind 
is suffering from the narrowness of this world and must 


192 Church, Community, State and Education 

learn that in Christ God calls them to be citizens of a 
heavenly world. This necessitates, in the first place, the 
admission of sin, under whose domination they and the 
whole world stand; and it will come to pass through belief 
in their forgiveness ana through the experience of the liv¬ 
ing power of love which springs from the recognition and 
admission of sin and from faith in Jesus Christ. In so far 
as small, living Christian communities, possessing this certi¬ 
tude and filled with the hope of a supernatural salvation, 
come to exist among the disinherited peoples of today, will 
men be freed from all compulsion and learn once more to 
bear their fate patiently one with another. This is the first 
step towards a solution of the crisis of civilization. 

The Christian, therefore, on the basis of his faith can 
only understand the meaning of the present crisis in one 
way, namely, that it is the will of God that once again, in 
this present unchristian and secularized world, the living 
church should arise. That is the meaning of all the suffer¬ 
ing imposed on modern man. The reason why such an 
idea appears so impossible of belief to so many is because 
they cannot imagine that precisely the church could ever 
be of such importance. It is nevertheless necessary to em¬ 
phasize the fact that the destiny of the church is the pivot 
on which the fate of our entire civilization turns. This 
could be shown in many ways, in the importance of the 
church for science, for intellectual life, the legal system, 
the theory and practice of medicine, and for political and 
economic reconstruction. Here we will only discuss the 
question: In what way is the modern problem of education 
a religious problem? 

4. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM 

The problem of freedom is the root problem of all edu¬ 
cation. Clarke is quite right about this. But what is free- 


“X 


193 

dom? Obviously this is the point at which Christians of 
different nationalities understand each other least, because 
the political conditions under which they live differ too 
widely. In democratically governed countries, men will 
always be inclined to understand by freedom the recogni¬ 
tion of the so-called fundamental rights of a free person¬ 
ality, and such a conception will obviously be most firmly 
and durably ingrained in those countries where these rights 
have never been codified, but where they belong to the self- 
evident assumptions of social life. Looked at from such a 
standpoint, the educational problem will assume the shape 
that Clarke has given it, namely, How can the younger gen¬ 
eration be educated so as to retain the ideal of a free per¬ 
sonality, while providing scope for its realization, and at 
the same time inculcating discipline, civic responsibility, 
and public spirit? I do not wish to criticize this method of 
stating the problem. Clarke has shown very fully why, 
from his position as an Englishman, the situation appears 
to him in this light. It is scarcely to be expected that it 
would appear in any other. Freedom in this liberal sense 
no longer exists in countries under a totalitarian regime, 
and therefore for them Clarke’s conception loses its mean¬ 
ing. It is immaterial whether we deplore this or not. For 
it is a fact which must be reckoned with and one which 
cannot be reversed. But this does not mean in the least 
that the quest for freedom has been extinguished. On the 
contrary, the problem of freedom rises once more with 
youthful vigor from the immense funeral pyre which has 
consumed all the liberal rights of personal and political 
freedom, since these rights were considered not only un¬ 
necessary but positively harmful. And now indeed the 
problem assumes its original form as the fight for the free¬ 
dom of the Christian faith and for the freedom of the Chris¬ 
tian conscience. Once the problem is stated in these terms 


194 Church, Community, State and Education 

it is no longer a question of so adjusting the balance be¬ 
tween the freedom of individual action and development 
and the necessities and demands of political and social or¬ 
der as to avoid too great individualism on the one hand or 
collectivism on the other, but it becomes a question of what 
is the highest court of appeal binding on man’s faith and 
conscience. 

All those engaged in this fight for freedom of conscience 
and for their Christian faith are convinced that the true 
depth and meaning of the problem of human freedom is 
only finally understood when stated in this way. For if 
the freedom of the individual in political and social life 
presupposes what a German would describe as a willed ac¬ 
ceptance of submission, order, and discipline, and which an 
Englishman would presumably characterize as common 
sense, then the problem finally resolves itself into the ques¬ 
tion: what inner laws must man accept as binding on his 
faith and conscience if he is to find freedom in obedience 
and remain obedient while free? This obedience is that 
imposed by the Christian faith, and this freedom is that 
found in a Christian life. 

A few examples will show the character of this freedom 
and what it may mean for our present time. As a result of 
the secularization of the Christian belief in God a number 
of philosophies came into being, none of which assumed a 
really dominant position. Scepticism is the hall-mark of 
our time. This scepticism poses as freedom, but is in real¬ 
ity the opposite of freedom, for in the long run it exposes 
man to a dreary fatalism ending in many cases in weary 
resignation and despair, or else resulting in unbridled en¬ 
thusiasms and the glorification of violence; which in es¬ 
sence are also counsels of despair. Most people are un¬ 
aware until it is forced upon them by brutal circumstances 
how close a connection exists between scepticism and vio¬ 
lence, and how easily so-called free thought degenerates 


“X” 195 

into tyranny over the faith and conscience of others. In 
contrast to this, faith in the living God, with whom man 
enters into personal relationship through prayer, stands for 
freedom. Yes, this is the freedom on which all true person¬ 
ality is founded since we feel ourselves to be persons be¬ 
cause he, God, has revealed himself to us as a person, inas¬ 
much as we believe in the revelation of himself in the 
person of Jesus Christ. In classical times men did not have 
this feeling, nor does the native of India have it today, nor 
do human beings in the mass, as all those will agree who 
have experienced how easy it is to talk reasonably with 
individuals, how impossible when dealing with a crowd. 

Moreover, our notions of right and wrong, good and bad, 
true and false have all been blurred and confused by the 
intellectual chaos of the present day. Scorn is poured on 
what used to be considered holy, such as marriage and the 
family, duty and custom, state and church. Doubt is ex¬ 
pressed as to whether it might not be better in certain cases 
to deprive men forcibly of their lives in the name of pity, 
or for other reasons of expediency; whether the higher 
righteousness does not consist in robbing them of their 
property; whether indeed there is any such thing as a su¬ 
preme truth to which we owe allegiance, or whether it does 
not all come down to how cleverly we can tell a lie. This 
purports to be freedom, for it creates the illusion that man 
is the measure of all things. But in truth it is the very nega¬ 
tion of freedom. This is not obvious while man is still at 
the stage of criticizing all things, and the consequences of 
his destructive criticism have not yet come to light. As 
soon as this happens, however, it becomes abundantly clear 
that God’s Ten Commandments are not merely a human 
code of ethics which we can accept or reject as we like, but 
that in very truth God visits the sins of the fathers upon the 
children unto the third and fourth generation. 

We long for fellowship, yet when or where has any true 


196 Church, Community, State and Education 

fellowship existed among men unless they recognized that 
before God no man may boast and that God is no respecter 
of persons? The most radical “ equality ” that can possibly 
exist between men of different races, nationality, class, and 
sex is that covered by the Christian admission that “ we are 
all sinners one with another.” All true social equality pre¬ 
supposes that men should recognize this their fundamental 
equality before God and express it in their willingness to 
forgive one another. He who has learnt to forgive is truly 
free. He who has not yet learnt to do so is still bound. He 
is bound in all the relationships of his life. 

Finally, who is truly free who has not achieved liberty 
face to face with death? This does not mean that one 
should long for death or hope to find in non-existence an 
escape from the barrenness and emptiness of an existence 
which has become unmeaning, for in nothingness there is 
neither liberty nor bondage, but just precisely nothing. 
The liberty of which we speak refers to those who have 
attained a sure faith in the reality of the eternal world 
which began with the risen Christ. “ And though they 
take our life, goods, honor, children, wife, yet is their profit 
small; these things shall vanish all: the city of God re¬ 
mained!.” This hymn of Luther’s is only too often sung 
by those who know little of the tremendous freedom it 
expresses. 

These considerations must suffice to make clear what is 
meant by the liberty of the followers of Christ and what 
such liberty may mean for the present generation. It will 
perhaps show also what was foreshadowed above, that all 
freedom in political and social life comes as the fruit of this 
liberty of conscience and belief. This explains why we 
consider that the educational task of the church today lies 
in testifying in a clear and unequivocal manner, supported 
by practice, to the reality of this freedom. 




i97 

If the church does this it obviously has nothing to do 
with education in the usual meaning of the term. For edu¬ 
cation is something given by one person to another, by one 
generation to another. The message, however, which the 
church must deliver is no ethical or educational system of 
values; it is the revelation of the living God. With such a 
gospel to preach, the church may not indulge in even the 
faintest speculation as to whether “ Christianity might not 
after all be given a trial as a method of education.” But 
this gospel must be preached in the firm conviction that it 
alone represents the one hope of salvation for mankind, for 
it alone makes possible the union between man and the 
living God. This uncompromising character of the Chris¬ 
tian message will certainly alienate many people, but, on 
the other hand, it is precisely this quality which constitutes 
its essentially “ educative ” power. 

On the other hand, it remains true that all really pro¬ 
found and penetrating thought on the nature of education, 
and educational methods when faced with really serious 
problems, cannot escape the question as to what can ulti¬ 
mately exert a binding effect on a man’s belief and con¬ 
science. In every critical era this is the stage at which the 
old root problems of education and ethics again make their 
appearance, problems which have occupied the great minds 
of every age. Is there in this world an “ absolute good,” 
or, as it is more customary nowadays to put it in educa¬ 
tional circles, is there such a thing as “ absolute value? ” 
What is this one “ good,” what is this highest value, for 
which mankind shall be educated? And moreover, does 
that which we call good stand always in irreconcilable op¬ 
position to what Pestalozzi calls “ the mire of this world ”? 
Thirdly, is there not an irreconcilable antithesis between 
right thinking and right doing, between will and achieve¬ 
ment? 


198 Church, Community, State and Education 

It would seem to me that these questions are also con¬ 
tained in what Clarke demands of the new type of educa¬ 
tion which he has in mind. For when he says that it is of 
primary importance “ to organize and direct the essential 
process of ‘ taking on a culture ’ by the individual, a process 
which is at the same time a development and enhancement 
of the individual’s own powers,” he surely does not mean 
that our cultural heritage should be transmitted in its en¬ 
tirety, but only that part of it which is worth transmitting. 
But what standards shall we apply in the choice of good and 
bad in the cultural heritage of liberalism? And when 
Clarke goes on to say that the second requirement is “to 
bring about the internalizing of the ruling sanctions and 
values of the culture so that, from being external standards 
and compulsions they become consciously accepted and ap¬ 
plied as personal criteria,” the question surely resolves 
itself into just how this can be brought about. Can it and 
should it be achieved simply by teaching and custom? But 
how can that be done when opinion is so divided as to 
whether these fundamental convictions have any right to 
rule, or whether the truths that some acclaim are not in 
reality untruths? How can it be done when a critical atti¬ 
tude on the part of youth towards the dominant values of a 
past civilization is even considered necessary and a sign of 
a healthy desire for progress? And thirdly, when Clarke 
says the problem is how to train the will so that action may 
be in harmony with insight, does not that conceal the 
knotty problem of the freedom or unfreedom of the human 
will? 

The deeper one penetrates into these questions, the more 
one feels thrown back on the few basic problems which lie 
at the root of all ethics and all educational systems, prob¬ 
lems which were already occupying the mind of Socrates. 
Their only solution is to be found in the gospel of the 


X 


1 99 

revelation of the living God in Jesus Christ. For the root 
questions which lie at the bottom of all educational thought 
are these: What will both bind and set free the consciences 
of men? What is the highest criterion of good and evil, 
right and wrong, true and false? Who will release us from 
guilt? Who will reconcile us with fate? Who can awaken 
the power of love without which there can be no true fel¬ 
lowship? If these questions remain unanswered, all hu¬ 
man education is arrested midway. But human beings left 
to themselves are quite unable to answer these questions. 
Only the gospel of the revelation of God in Christ can do 
this. He alone is absolute truth, the one true criterion for 
all decisions of conscience, who frees us from sin and gives 
us love. “ Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice, 
but everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, neither com- 
eth to the light.” 

If at this stage we hark back once more to what was said 
about the present crisis of civilization and the inner situa¬ 
tion of modern man, is it claiming too much to assert that 
the modern world resembles a ploughed field waiting for 
the seed of the Christian gospel? Do the various countries 
really differ so greatly in this respect? Certainly there ex¬ 
ists a difference of degree, inasmuch as in some countries 
the inner chaos and lack of faith in the minds of men has 
brought them to the brink of ruin, whereas in others the 
danger is either not so obvious or has not gone so far. But 
the signs of inner disruption are to be met with every¬ 
where, and as long as the specter of another and still more 
terrible war haunts the minds of men, so long will they be 
under the domination of a universal fear. It is not neces¬ 
sary for the church to admonish men with apocalyptic 
warnings — those dread images are already present to their 
minds. The church needs to proclaim the peace of God 
which passes all understanding. 


200 Church, Community, State and Education 

5. THE EDUCATIONAL TASK OF THE CHURCH AT THE 
PRESENT TIME 

The foregoing will have made apparent the reasons why 
the educational task of the church is not conceived as con¬ 
sisting primarily in the church’s influence on the pub¬ 
lic educational system. As Clarke truly says, educational 
theory and practice, as embodied in an organized system 
of education, must always follow the temporary changes 
taking place in the inner and outer conditions governing 
society. If civilization becomes more and more secular¬ 
ized, schools will follow suit. It follows that the church 
would be hopelessly at the mercy of the various temporary 
changes due to the spirit of the age, if the fulfilment of her 
educational duties depended on the machinery of the state 
or of society. And it is especially unwise for her to rely 
on the schools. Quite apart from the fact that the attitude 
of school teachers to the church is often extremely luke¬ 
warm, if not actually inimical, schools are not capable of 
standing out alone against the forces of disruption mani¬ 
festing themselves in society. I do not believe that any 
form of human education is capable of doing this. For in 
the last resort we are faced with the need for a new spirit 
among men, and as is well known “ the spirit bloweth 
where it listeth.” It is beyond men’s control. 

But if it is a fact that our civilization cannot free itself 
from the Christian tradition even when actuated by anti- 
Christian motives, and if the present crisis really bears the 
meaning which we think it does, then if these things are so 
it becomes more and more obvious that mankind is being 
prepared for the revelation of the gospel of Christ by the 
actual experiences of their lives; but this means that their 
preparation is the work of God himself. If such is the case, 
the church should preach the gospel, believing in the 


a y ** 


201 


power of the truth with which she has been entrusted, and 
she should renounce all reliance on propagandist methods 
and other forms of educational tyranny. The number of 
adherents she gains, or regains, is comparatively unimpor¬ 
tant; what does matter is that she should make her mean¬ 
ing clear. Men must feel that this message really affects 
them in all their troubles whether of mind or circumstance. 

The following individual points should be borne in 
mind: 

1. The church needs a restatement of Christian truth 
which shall be in living contact with the questions current 
in modern thought. She must be willing to learn from the 
kind of questions asked by modern science, for these are 
much closer to life than the questions current in traditional 
theology. That does not mean that she should in any way 
surrender the truths of faith which she holds in trust. Her 
task consists rather in pointing out quite clearly once again 
the dividing line that separates knowing and believing — 
a division which has been completely obscured in modern 
thought. Only in this way will the help which theology 
may give to the natural sciences and which science in its 
turn may give to the church become truly mutual. For it 
is by no means true that science does not need such help. 
Natural science, as any scientist will admit, is at present 
undergoing a process of upheaval. The old conception 
of universal knowledge no longer exists. The intellec¬ 
tual connecting link which bound the various specialized 
branches of knowledge to each other in a unity has been 
lost. This becomes all the more painfully obvious when 
science is confronted with practical tasks involving the 
lives of human beings. That is why we are beginning to 
see more clearly wherein lies the cardinal error of former 
scientific thought. The period of history from which we 
are just emerging believed in science for the sake of science, 


202 Church, Community, State and Education 

a thing which does not exist, for science is always related 
to man, and exists for the sake of man, and not man for the 
sake of science. But if man comes to occupy the central 
position, the problems of human destiny and guilt, of time 
and eternity, of the relative and absolute, assume quite an¬ 
other importance. The answer to such questions can no 
longer be given by knowledge, but only by faith. If knowl¬ 
edge tries to find an answer it becomes transformed into 
faith. This raises the question: Is this the true faith, is it 
a faith capable of shouldering such a burden? Once more 
the limits of reason become apparent. The problem of 
the truth of faith, which cannot be decided on scientific 
grounds, once more becomes a living question. However 
impressive the advances of modern science may be — and 
perhaps they appear most imposing to those who have not 
quite realized the process of upheaval they are at present 
undergoing — it must not be supposed that they could 
ever replace, or even put in the shade, the truths of the 
Christian faith which belong to quite another category. As 
soon as scientific theory is put to the test of practice its diffi¬ 
culties immediately become apparent, in psychology no 
less than in biology. 

2. The community needs clear teaching on the root 
problems of Christian belief. This presupposes sound the¬ 
ology; and the proper fulfilment of this second duty must 
therefore always go hand in hand with the former. It is a 
mistake to suppose that the “ uneducated ” can be fobbed 
off with half-baked doctrine, or that it is easier to speak to 
the “ masses ” than to the “ intelligentsia.” The opposite 
is true. The latter can sometimes be humbugged, but the 
former never in regard to matters touching their practical 
experience of life. Only the profound is simple, only the 
simple profound. But this is best learnt by practical ex¬ 
perience. Theology which is not put to the practical test 


“ X ” 203 

of its effect on the community is, in any case, a thing of no 
account. This brings out one of the root evils in the 
church. What she says is partly too complicated and partly 
directed over the heads of her hearers. Unprejudiced ob¬ 
servation of church people of today will everywhere reveal 
the fact that they lack a knowledge of the elementary truths 
of the Christian faith. To begin with, they are ignorant of 
the Ten Commandments; still less are they acquainted 
with the articles of belief, and their ignorance of Holy Writ 
is abysmal. What is required is instruction, instruction, 
and once again instruction, and that without any false fear 
of so-called intellectualism. For present-day man needs to 
be taught here and now the meaning of the commandment 
" thou shalt have none other gods beside me.” He must 
learn why children should honor their parents; why it is 
never right, even for a doctor, to attempt the life of an¬ 
other; why marriage is holy, etc., and when all this is placed 
in a true light and contrasted with the various confused 
opinions and misstatements of the present day, such teach¬ 
ing is not mere intellectualism, but the living and presum¬ 
ably even the interesting truth. What is needed is to tell 
the people these things so clearly and so incisively that they 
can recognize the experiences of their lives in Holy Scrip¬ 
ture. That is why it is very important that the church of 
every country should speak in good, clear, compelling Ger¬ 
man, English, French, or whatever other language it may 
be. For the international journalese, to which man is ac¬ 
customed at the present day, spoils his capacity for thought 
by the use of superficial phrases, and the most varied assort¬ 
ment of foreign words, which he only half understands. 
Many a matter becomes at once much clearer when it is 
translated from the phraseology of the newspaper into 
simple everyday language such as our forefathers used to 
express their thoughts. 


204 Church, Community, State and Education 

3. The mission of the church must include the cure of 
souls. This does not mean that the church should become 
sentimental or pietistic, but the minister must know the 
temptations and distresses that afflict modern man and, in¬ 
spired by the love of Christ, he should be able to speak of 
these matters in a manner which is both very gentle and 
yet entirely matter of fact. All true interpretation of Holy 
Scripture is also an interpretation of the meaning of hu¬ 
man life. We have in mind the problems arising from the 
relations of the sexes, the difficulties of married life, the 
cares which parents experience in bringing up their chil¬ 
dren, and especially perhaps the problems of conscience 
that arise in modern professional life. Added to these are 
the actual problems of faith with which mankind is faced 
by destiny, sin, guilt and death. All these problems should 
be treated in such a way that those who listen can discern 
the voice of Christ who is himself the Truth. In this way 
they will feel touched in their common humanity, for 
Christ was very man because the love of God dwelt in him. 

Obviously this presupposes in the preacher great per¬ 
sonal maturity and depth of Christian experience. Not 
everyone can be expected to have achieved mastery, but 
everyone must have come in contact with the realities of 
life in one form or another, and no more is demanded of 
him than that his testimony should be sincere and frank. 
Much help can be derived from sound theology. Once the 
right note has been struck, personal contact between the 
clergyman and his parishioners usually follows, and under 
the guidance of the Holy Spirit the good work proceeds. 
For there is nothing that deepens the theological percep¬ 
tions and the Christian experience of a clergyman so much 
as a real concern for the souls of the human beings with 
whom he associates. 

4. It will be needful everywhere to introduce new habits 


“X” 


205 

of Christian behavior, for habit or custom really means 
giving an orderly pattern to the events of a day, a year, a 
whole lifetime. That is absolutely essential. For not only 
is a world without Christ essentially irreligious, but the 
same applies to the secularization of time. As is well 
known, the New Testament uses one and the same word 
for “ world ” and “ time.” A man who lives entirely im¬ 
mersed in the temporal, for whom one day is like another, 
morning like evening, becomes so obsessed with the end¬ 
lessness of time that he forgets eternity. Reference might 
be made here to the significance for the spiritual life of 
man of the daily habit of reading the newspaper. His 
mind gets flooded with a multiplicity of temporal happen¬ 
ings, but he loses contact with eternal truth. This is one 
of the most important symptoms of the worldliness of 
present-day life. Where formerly you would find the 
Bible, you now find the daily newspaper, the editor has 
usurped the place of the priest and the desk that of the 
pulpit. This fact alone renders possible the centralized 
control of public opinion as practiced today in totali¬ 
tarian states. 

Obviously it is not the business of the church to try to 
reverse this state of things. The present day and the day’s 
newspaper are not in themselves evil, but they can easily 
be turned to sinister uses if the church does not simultane¬ 
ously lay stress on the eternal truth which has been en¬ 
trusted to her keeping. Moreover, man cannot live merely 
from day to day and on the day’s newspaper articles, and 
that is why it is the duty of the church to exhort her follow¬ 
ers in all earnestness to the regular hearing of the Word 
of God. This brings us to the question of keeping holy 
the Sabbath day, of family prayers, observing church feasts, 
and all those matters which link together the passing of 
time with the outlook on eternity. Do not say that such 


206 Church, Community, State and Education 

things are too simple, too primitive. If the church is shy 
of taking these simple primitive things seriously, the rest 
of the world will not hesitate to act in a still more “ primi¬ 
tive ” fashion. It is scarcely credible how helpless modern 
man is, or how easily led if he is approached in the right 
way, for he has lost the right ordering of his life and his 
nervousness is largely bound up with the temporal disorder 
of his existence and the barrier between him and all the 
forces of eternity. 

In this connection we may consider the desirability of 
forming small groups of people for the discussion of their 
personal and professional problems. Women especially 
feel a strong and legitimate desire for such small gather¬ 
ings, though this need is by no means confined only to 
women. People in the large cities of today have a real 
longing for neighborliness and the encouragement result¬ 
ing from comradeship. But they must actually have some¬ 
thing in common which will create a real bond, and the 
comradeship must have depth and meaning. The church 
must attempt to provide an effective counterweight to the 
type of social gathering now fashionable in which shallow 
eroticism attempts to mask the absence of real depth of 
feeling. 

All this brings us back to the great question which is of 
paramount importance for the future of our civilization, 
namely, whether the Christian church of the present day 
still has, or will be given, sufficient inner vitality to create 
small, living communities from the vast hordes of people 
living in the great cities of today. Success cannot come 
at once and need not be attained in a hurry, but this is the 
alpha and omega for the solution of the world crisis of 
civilization. Until such living communities exist, enshrin¬ 
ing one faith and participating in a satisfying community 
life, the future remains entirely unpredictable, for it is im- 


X 


207 

possible to predict the moods and opinions of the masses. 
We must therefore reckon with catastrophes, because the 
masses have a liking for catastrophes. The people will 
ever run after some new thing, cupida novarum rerum, 
and they know nothing and care less for patience. Their 
permanent character is change, but not the peace of 
eternity. 

Is the modern church capable of such an educational 
task? By her own unaided effort certainly not, but in all 
that she undertakes she must ever reckon with the help of 
God. It might seem as if the end could be more rapidly 
reached by formulating a new educational program and 
forcibly imposing it on the people. However that may be, 
we are brought up against the principle of totalitarianism 
in education, but nothing can be achieved by hurry. If 
the universal process of disintegration in society and cul¬ 
ture has lasted hundreds of years, it cannot be reversed in 
ten. The church needs much humility, much patience 
and much love. But she should never doubt that this so- 
called crisis of civilization is in truth a crisis of faith and 
can only be properly estimated and dealt with in the light 
of that truth which has been entrusted to her keeping. She 
must have the certainty of her own indispensability and 
believe in her own future and in God’s promise to her. 

6. THE EUROPEAN EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM AND THE 
ONE HOLY CHURCH 

The cultural and educational crisis with which we are 
dealing affects the whole of Europe and may even extend 
beyond its borders. That is why attempts at a political solu¬ 
tion are not confined to any one country, but extend in 
one form or another to all countries. Clarke also seems to 
hold this view. That is why he says that “ the ideal of free 
personality, just as the closely related ideal of equality. 


2o8 Church, Community, State and Education 

must be looked on as articles of faith of a universal reli¬ 
gion.” In parenthesis it may be remarked that the same 
claim would presumably also be made for the idea of a uni¬ 
versal communistic world order. This shows how even 
here present-day ideas are the heirs of the ideals of liber¬ 
alism and humanism, with the characteristic difference that 
such a communist world would be set up by violence and 
world revolution. 

From the standpoint of the church it may be remarked 
that one ideal like the other is an image of the one holy 
church, Una Sancta Ecclesia. It is, therefore, very signifi¬ 
cant that at a time when the church is split up into nu¬ 
merous national churches and sects, the ideal of one world¬ 
embracing community should be reborn in the world of 
political thought. So deeply rooted are we in the tradi¬ 
tions of our Christian history. 

From the standpoint of spiritual history, the idea of a 
league of nations appears as a secularized version of the 
Christian hope in the heavenly kingdom of eternal peace. 1 
Its secularization consists in the fact that a spiritual hope 
resting in a universal recognition of Christ as the Lord of 
the world, has been transformed into a political power. 
But in this form the difficulty of realizing this ideal in 
practical life is a constant problem, which, in the long run, 
just because we are dealing with political power, resolves 
itself into the problem of the collective use of force. This 
becomes immediately apparent as soon as the articles of the 
league are violated. But all successful use of force would 
immediately convert the league of nations into a society of 
nations, two conceptions which Kant was careful to keep 
separate. The attempt to solve the universal European 
educational problem by such an encroachment of the insti¬ 
tution of the league of nations would necessarily lead to 
i Cf. Kant: Zum ewigen Frieden (Toward Eternal Peace). 


X 


2og 

such a society of nations adopting the theory and practice 
of totalitarianism (which hitherto has only been realized 
by individual nations), and such a situation could only 
be achieved by completely revolutionizing the world. 

The situation appears quite different when a solution 
to the problems raised by the European educational crisis 
is sought in the hope that God will bring about closer 
spiritual union between the Christians of all nations in 
their common struggle for the truth of their faith and the 
existence of their church. The following two instances 
will show how constantly the feeling after the Una Sancta 
appears in the background of our educational problems: 
The unity of the “ European family of nations ” (Ranke) 
does not consist in their biological and racial relationship 
nor in the sociological solidarity of the working classes, 
but it is historically conditioned by their common Chris¬ 
tian tradition. On this tradition is founded the unity of 
European culture, nay even the unity of European civiliza¬ 
tion. However unchristian this civilization may now seem 
to us, its essentially Christian quality is recognized by non- 
Christian countries. The greater the national and po¬ 
litical strain, the more important it becomes for us to 
recognize and give shape to the unity of the Una Sancta 
Ecclesia which we possess in the common belief in Christ as 
our divinely appointed Lord, the savior and judge of all 
men and of all nations. This is no mere political unity, 
but its effectiveness and reality depend entirely on how far 
it becomes a living reality in the spirit of Jesus Christ. 

The task which this imposes on us is that in the face of 
the old and new paganism with which Christians in all 
countries are faced today, we should be fully conscious of 
what binds us together as Christians and what duties are 
laid upon us as Christians. 

The second fact which demonstrates clearly the close 


210 Church, Community, State and Education 

connection between our educational problems and the 
Una Sancta is shown by the paralyzing effect which the 
multiplicity of sects and their internecine quarrels have on 
the effectiveness of the Christian gospel. The greater the 
success achieved in the political sphere by the concentra¬ 
tion of political power, the more ridiculous appears the 
ecclesiastical separatism of the church of Jesus Christ. 
Anti-Christian propaganda knows how to use this for its 
profit, as, for instance, when it directs its attacks not at the 
religion and rites current at home, but only at those of 
other countries which are little known to its own peoples 
and so easily turned to ridicule. In the long run every gibe 
directed against Christian belief weakens the authority of 
the Christian church. That cannot be altered, but it can 
to some extent be countered by deepening in the conscious¬ 
ness of Christians of all countries their sense of belonging 
to one universal Christian church. 

Finally, the advent of the Una Sancta does not depend 
on human assent or dissent, but on the measure in which 
men take up their stand for or against Christ, and on 
whether the fight which the church must wage in this or 
that country is felt to be a matter which concerns Chris¬ 
tians of all countries. Only then will men feel each other 
to be brothers in Christ and will then assist each other as 
brothers because they will be ceaselessly spurred on by their 
concern for the honor of their Lord. 


SOME CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS 

by 

J. H. Oldham 






SOME CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS 


There is general agreement among the contributors to 
this volume that there is a crisis in education. The word 
crisis is often lightly used and may, in consequence, mean 
little or much. The preceding contributions give to the 
term a solid substance and impressive weight. Even in 
America where the outward evidences of a crisis are less 
obvious than in Europe, Dr. Paul Monroe asserts that very 
great social changes are in progress, to which education has 
not yet adjusted itself and that the American educational 
system, like all others, is facing problems for which a solu¬ 
tion has not yet been found and for the treatment of which 
traditional methods are insufficient. It is, in fact, in the 
education field that the modern conflict between the Chris¬ 
tian and the non-Christian views of life finds many of its 
most striking manifestations and that the resulting prob¬ 
lems in the relations between church, community, and state 
exhibit some of their most characteristic features. 

There is a crisis in education because there is a crisis in 
modern culture, and it is culture — in the sense of the 
beliefs, standards and customs prevailing in the com¬ 
munity — finding unconscious as well as conscious expres¬ 
sion in the school, that is the real educative force. The 
school is effective, as Professor Clarke has pointed out, only 
in so far as it concentrates and focuses the educative influ¬ 
ences inherent in the prevailing culture, and transmits 
from generation to generation — often unconsciously even 
more than by its deliberate and planned organization, cur¬ 
ricula and instruction — the unspoken understandings 

213 


214 Church, Community, State and Education 

which give character and meaning to that culture. We are 
told by some observers that a new type of man is being 
produced in Russia . 1 But in so far as this is being brought 
about, it is the result of fundamental changes in the eco¬ 
nomic and industrial basis of society, and of the conse¬ 
quent new social relations of men with one another, much 
more than of the conscious efforts of the school. In so far 
as these have contributed to the change it is because they 
reflect the new order of society. 

The dominant feature of the present situation of which 
the church has to take account is the weakening of the hold 
on men’s minds of the Christian understanding of life and 
consequently the breakdown of the ethos inspired by it and 
the culture of which it was one of the main determinants. 
In wide areas the essential Christian affirmations are openly 
repudiated. Elsewhere, there is an inner decay of their 
influence. For growing numbers they have ceased to have 
a living meaning. The process has gone much further in 
some countries than in others. It is those in which its ad¬ 
vance has been greatest that are instructive for all. What 
has taken place there opens our eyes to realities which are 
often concealed by the continued nominal adherence of 
large numbers to the Christian tradition and by the linger¬ 
ing power of entrenched custom and traditional prestige. 

The differences in different countries are wide and im¬ 
portant. But they should not blind us to the underlying 
similarities which are perhaps deeper and more significant 
than the differences. Everywhere the state or the com¬ 
munity is tending to establish education on new founda¬ 
tions and to adopt new aims and methods. Everywhere 
large sections of the younger generation are distrustful of 
all tradition and desirous of striking out on new paths. 

1 Cf. Thomas L. Harris, Unholy Pilgrimage (Round Table Press, New 
York). 


J. H. Oldham 215 

Everywhere the church is being pushed to the circum¬ 
ference of men’s lives and interests. If an open conflict is 
avoided it is often because the church has itself become 
secularized and offers little resistance to prevailing tend¬ 
encies. The consequences of this crisis in men’s ultimate 
beliefs — which one of the contributors rightly describes 
as in essence a crisis of faith — are plainly set forth in the 
preceding pages. The cement which holds society together 
is the general acceptance of certain common assumptions, 
expressed or implied, in its relations, activities and institu¬ 
tions, as to what is good and what is bad, what is just and 
what is unjust, what is permissible and what is forbidden. 
Where such acceptance is lacking society must fall to pieces. 
In some countries the process of disintegration has pro¬ 
ceeded so far that these common presuppositions no longer 
exist. The state is driven in consequence to an energetic 
attempt to provide a new basis of social order. The essen¬ 
tial fact, as Professor Clarke reminds us, is the social 
and cultural breakdown itself, rather than the philosophy 
which attempts to repair it. In seeking for such a philos¬ 
ophy, the state may be forced to recognize that it cannot 
restore unity to the common life on the basis of Christian 
beliefs and values, since these have entirely lost their hold 
on large sections of the population. It therefore feels itself 
driven to discover or create some “ myth ” to be the center 
of national unity. It attempts to establish what is in effect 
a new religion, and where this course is embarked on 
the conflict with the church becomes inevitable, since its 
understanding of life is an obstacle to the spread of the new 
faith. 

The position of the church where ideas of liberty and 
toleration prevail is outwardly much more favorable. But 
the experience of the church where it has to contend with 
totalitarian tendencies compels us to ask whether all is as 


216 Church, Community, State and Education 

well under a liberal system as we have been accustomed to 
suppose, and whether the Christian faith has not been ex¬ 
posed in an era of toleration to insidious dangers which we 
have failed sufficiently to recognize. As the writer of the 
anonymous contribution in this volume points out, Chris¬ 
tianity under a liberal regime comes to be regarded as 
merely one among many possible conceptions of life and 
of the world, and this attitude insensibly and fatally under¬ 
mines the Christian claim that Christ is the sole Lord of 
life and that in him alone is salvation to be found. It is 
a mistake to regard the position of the church under a lib¬ 
eral system as normal. The condition of the church con¬ 
forms much more closely to New Testament standards 
when it finds itself in conflict with a claim on the part of 
the state to absolute authority that is irreconcilable with 
the ultimate loyalty of the church to God alone. 

The same danger of the surreptitious sapping of the 
foundations of the Christian faith by the all-pervading in¬ 
fluence of a secular culture is the theme of Mr. Smith’s 
paper. It is possible for Christianity to be tolerated and 
even accorded public recognition and given an acknowl¬ 
edged place in the school and yet for the effect of the teach¬ 
ing to be overborne and overweighted by the insistent 
pressure of the secular assumptions prevalent in the society, 
the life of which is reflected in the school. 

Mr. Morris sees, and states very clearly, the educational 
problem in countries with a liberal tradition. Education 
could afford to concern itself in the main with the intellect 
“ so long as the general direction of a man’s life could be 
taken for granted.” But in a world in which “ there is no 
strong current of religious, moral, social, or political ortho¬ 
doxy ” the problem of education assumes a very different 
shape. The task of the educator under these conditions 
is to help men to find a cause to which they can freely de- 


J. H. Oldham 217 

vote themselves. Only through such self-devotion can 
there come the vigor which finds expression in new ener¬ 
gies and bends life to new purposes. Human life finds its 
fulfillment, as multitudes of adherents of the new move¬ 
ments are discovering today, not in an unfettered choice 
between endless possibilities but in the dedication of the 
whole self to the service of a commanding end. 

The crucial problem confronting education is the ques¬ 
tion of freedom and authority. It is on this point that the 
contributions to this volume lay the strongest emphasis. 
As one of them says, “ the problem of freedom is the root 
problem of all education.” The same writer shows how 
this problem of freedom must of necessity present itself in 
different forms in democratic and in totalitarian countries. 
It is by exposing our minds to this sharp and deep contrast 
that we may perhaps best arrive at the true meaning of 
Christian freedom. 

Professor Clarke takes as his starting point the growth of 
free personality as the goal of education. This ideal has 
the power, as he truly says, to evoke the passionate enthu¬ 
siasm of teachers, not only in England, but in democratic 
countries generally, and it lies at the heart of the human¬ 
istic conception of education which from the time of the 
Renaissance has tended more and more to dominate edu¬ 
cation in Europe. The individual is set over against the 
world, and his task is to understand it, to appropriate it, 
and to master it. The movement, as Professor Zenkowsky 
points out, was a right and necessary assertion of freedom 
against the restrictions placed by the church on thought 
and inquiry and against its tendency to engulf the person¬ 
ality. It opened up lines of progress which can never be 
retraced. The gains of this breaking of all fetters which 
confined the human spirit are unquestionable and splen¬ 
did. The humanistic ideal of the all-round personality has 


218 Church, Community, State and Education 

found expression in individual lives of brilliant richness. 
It has been education, as Mr. Morris says, “ after the grand 
manner.” 

But there is a reverse side to the picture. Great as have 
been the achievements of the humanistic ideal, its effects 
in other directions have been disastrous. Because the pos¬ 
sibilities are endless on every side life tends to lack direc¬ 
tion and clearness of aim. Hence, the result is apt to be 
that lack of “ vigor ” which Mr. Morris deplores. As Pro¬ 
fessor Tillich has pointed out, 2 the defect of this conception 
of education is that while everything is interesting, nothing 
makes an unconditional demand. There is no uncondi¬ 
tional claim to give to life meaning and direction. More¬ 
over, this type of education is the privilege of a few 
individuals or of a class. The masses are of necessity ex¬ 
cluded from it. It is fundamentally individualistic and 
cannot create community. It leaves unsolved the problems 
to which Professor Clarke, Mr. Morris, and other contrib¬ 
utors to this volume so forcibly direct attention. How is 
freedom to be prevented from developing into licence and 
self-seeking egoism, and so proving destructive of all com¬ 
munity? Where are we to find the sources of social obli¬ 
gation? How in education is provision to be made for 
discipline? 

One of the most radical criticisms of humanistic educa¬ 
tion is found in the writings of Professor Eberhard Grise- 
bach. 3 The world of humanism he regards as an unreal 
world because it has its center in the self. Cooperation 
between individuals is indeed indispensable in scientific 
and humanistic studies. But the necessity arises solely 
from the limitation of the individual’s powers. The bar¬ 
riers are not in principle insurmountable. In the last re- 

2 Religiose Verwirklichung, p. 183. 

3 Gegenwart, 1928; Freiheit und Zucht, 1936. 


J. H. Oldham 219 

sort it is the individual who chooses what he will assimilate 
and what he will reject. Nowhere in this field does the 
self encounter an irremovable barrier. Nowhere does it 
meet a reality which effectively limits it and which it is 
wholly outside its power to change or control. The ines¬ 
capably real is met with only when the self encounters an¬ 
other self — when a person meets another person having 
his own similar, unique, and independent center of life. 
Here the self in its infinite expansion meets with a real 
limitation. Here we experience contradiction. A demand 
is made on us to which we must respond. Here in this en¬ 
counter in the living present, in contrast with the world of 
memory, we find ourselves face to face with stern, inescap¬ 
able reality. We are no longer free to choose, to judge, to 
assimilate, as we will. At this point our freedom en¬ 
counters a limit. We are called upon to respond to a de¬ 
mand which is not within our own control but which 
comes to us from without. We have to submit to the ten¬ 
sion, to endure the contradiction, to suffer. It is these 
experiences of the encounter of person with person, of the 
clash of will with will, that constitute real education. Yet 
little regard, or none at all, is paid to them in a humanistic 
education. 

We are thus led to the fundamental question of the 
nature of community. Too often the attempt has been 
made to take the individual as a self-subsisting entity and 
to inquire how he can be brought into harmonious rela¬ 
tions with other individuals. But the isolated individual 
is an abstraction. We exist as persons only in relation with 
other persons. Many, again, would look for unity in a com¬ 
mon outlook, in the acceptance of a common world view, 
in the cherishing of common ideals, and in devotion to 
common ends. These undoubtedly create genuine bonds, 
but the question may be raised whether they do not at the 


220 Church, Community, State and Education 

same time beget illusory hopes in so far as they leave out of 
the reckoning the profound differences which exist be¬ 
tween men — the radical “ otherness ” of the other just be¬ 
cause he is other. True community, Professor Grisebach 
would maintain, is realized not in eliminating the differ¬ 
ences or in attempting to bring others into agreement with 
one’s own view — to succeed in which would be to create 
an individual, solitary world — but in the endurance of 
the contradiction and the joyful acceptance of the con¬ 
tinuous tension between two opposed points of view, each 
of which renounces the claim to be absolute. 

The ultimate ground and guarantee of free personality 
against the engulfing claims of the state or of the com¬ 
munity is, as Professor Clarke says, religious. The denial 
of freedom in totalitarian states is compelling Christians 
to seek for a deeper understanding of the meaning of Chris¬ 
tian freedom. Under these conditions, as the writer of the 
preceding paper says, “ the problem of freedom rises once 
more with youthful vigor from the immense funeral pyre 
which has consumed all the liberal rights of personal and 
political freedom.” This paper contains an impressive de¬ 
scription of the nature of Christian freedom. It is an inner 
freedom. Essentially it is a freedom from self — from ego- 
centricity. This is a deliverance greater than deliverance 
from outward fetters. It can be brought about only from 
without. Only a love which meets us from outside can free 
us from our self-centeredness. Henceforward, the center 
of our lives is no longer in ourselves but in the one who 
loves us. Christian freedom is the freedom of those who 
have been forgiven and who have the power to forgive. 
It is the freedom of those who have been delivered from 
the fear of death, which is man’s last enemy. It is the 
freedom of those who know themselves to be the sons 
of God, and who in the power of that relationship are 


221 


J. H. Oldham 

triumphant over evil and over circumstances. It is a free¬ 
dom which is realized in the joyous service of God and 
for his sake in the service of men. It consists in the glad 
acceptance of the obligation to seek the good of other men 
as the means of realizing the highest freedom in and 
through the relation with other persons. It is revealed, as 
Professor Zenkowsky says, “ not in the isolation of human 
beings from each other, but in a brotherly union of all in 
Christ.” While it is rooted in the profound depths of 
personality, “ it is not given to the isolated individual, but 
to the many in mystical union through brotherly love; in 
other words, it is given to the church.” 

The supreme task of the church is to testify to this free¬ 
dom and to manifest it in the lives of its members. The 
church knows that no external measures can ever bind 
men’s consciences or make them inwardly free. Man’s 
freedom is freedom to choose and to realize the good, and 
that is something that no compulsion or propaganda or in¬ 
struction can achieve. It can only come about through an 
inward change. This truth is central in Christ’s teaching. 
Make the tree good. 

This inner freedom is, and has been in history, the 
source of social and political liberties. Since it is freedom 
to serve and obey God it must prompt to actions which 
bring those who possess it and act on it into conflict with 
tyrannical restrictions of the human spirit. Where and 
how the issue must be joined are questions which the in¬ 
dividual conscience has to decide in concrete situations. 
But the first task of Christians is to recover and realize the 
inner freedom which is the source and spring of all other 
liberties. 

Christians ought, therefore, to be able to perceive clearly 
the deceptiveness and inadequacy of the proposed reme¬ 
dies for the disease of the modern world and of current 


222 Church, Community, State and Education 

endeavors to re-create the bonds which unite men with one 
another in a genuine fellowship. They do not offer men, 
as Professor Zenkowsky points out, a genuine and com¬ 
plete freedom in which they can meet the demands of life 
in its wholeness but only a restricted and fettered freedom 
within the limits of a particular scheme of life imposed 
from above. Those who look to these solutions tend, as 
Mr. Morris shows, to have recourse to propaganda and the 
arts of mass suggestion rather than to concern themselves 
with the disinterested education of the whole personality. 
Nor, as the writer of the last of the papers reminds us, are 
these measures, which are directed primarily to political 
ends, capable of meeting the more fundamental human 
needs of the individual person in his hopes and fears, frus¬ 
trations and anxieties, in his quest for a satisfying meaning 
of life and in facing the inevitable end of his mortal ex¬ 
istence. Moreover, if an intense loyalty to the nation has 
the power to subordinate individual self-seeking to the 
common good, an extreme nationalism only transfers the 
anarchy of individualism to the international sphere by 
setting nation against nation, each remaining a law to it¬ 
self. The Christian, therefore, while recognizing much 
that is good and salutary and necessary in the endeavors to 
arrest the disintegration of society, will none the less per¬ 
ceive clearly the inadequacy of the means to achieve the 
desired end. He will not be content complacently to criti¬ 
cize these efforts, but, seeing that the need is desperate, 
will be impelled to think out what are the true remedies 
in order that he may be prepared when disillusionment 
comes, as come it must, to direct men’s minds to their real 
hope of salvation. 

Christians must at the same time recognize that the new 
movements are justified in their revolt against a selfish in¬ 
dividualism which must end inevitably in the dissolution 


J. H. Oldham 223 

of society. Community cannot be found in the attempt to 
reconcile the arbitrary desires and caprices of a multitude 
of separate individuals. Unity can be found only in the 
devotion of the individual to an end beyond himself. Men 
are turning today from the burden of an unchartered free¬ 
dom and the quicksands of their own unfettered choices to 
seek satisfaction in some reality outside themselves. The 
Marxist asks men to surrender themselves to the realiza¬ 
tion of the classless society which the forces of history are 
inexorably bringing about. The national-socialist claims 
their wholehearted devotion to the national community 
in its wholeness and to the historic soul which inspires its 
life. What is the objective reality which for the Christian 
has a superior claim to any of these? It must be something 
other than a subjective ideal. Our own conceptions of 
what is right and desirable cannot bind or command us. If 
our ideals are of our own choosing, since we have chosen 
them, we can by a change of mind, or under the pressure of 
fear or inconvenience, abandon them. Only something 
outside our own control can bind us. Only in the dedica¬ 
tion of ourselves to a reality which meets and challenges 
us can we find the true fulfillment of our lives and the 
“ vigor ” which comes from being at the disposal of a power 
not ourselves which we can absolutely trust. The Chris¬ 
tian confession, as Professor Kohnstamm reminds us, is 
Kurios Christos. The vital question for mankind is, in 
the phrase of Professor Tillich, whether history has a cen¬ 
ter — whether there exists a central reality which gives to 
the historical life of men a commanding meaning. To the 
various competing ends to which men surrender them¬ 
selves Christian faith opposes the supreme, decisive reality 
of the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. It maintains, 
that is to say, that the ultimate reality in human life is 
personal fellowship, rooted in-God’s love for men, and that 


224 Church, Community, State and Education 

human life finds its meaning and fulfilment in relations of 
love and service. 

It is only in the relationship of love that the problem of 
the individual and the community can find its solution. 
Where love is lacking, the individual must be sacrificed to 
the community or the community to the individual. We 
must end either in an anarchic individualism or in the 
totalitarian state. Only in the free and glad surrender of 
the self to a God who loves us and whom we love in return 
with our whole hearts, and whose service is consequently 
perfect freedom, is a solution found of the problem of 
freedom and authority. 

The great task of the church is to recall men’s minds to 
the true meaning of freedom and the true basis of com¬ 
munity. This cannot be done by preaching alone. The 
nature of love is such that it must be incarnated in life. To 
be understood, it must be exhibited, not merely described 
or affirmed. Christianity has retained its hold on men’s 
minds through successive generations because they have 
seen it exemplified in lives of convincing quality and 
attractive beauty. In the fellowship of the Christian 
community they have found forgiveness, redemption, sym¬ 
pathy, support, and renewed hope. All this has been 
obscured through the intellectualization of Christianity of 
which Professor Kohnstamm writes. In order that Chris¬ 
tian instruction might find a place in the school curriculum 
— itself conceived too often in almost exclusively intel¬ 
lectual terms — Christianity has been reduced to some¬ 
thing that can be taught. There are things about 
Christianity which can be taught, but not its essence and 
soul. Its true nature is disastrously misunderstood when it 
is thought of primarily as a body of facts and doctrines 
requiring intellectual assent. If the task of Christian edu¬ 
cation is to be taken in hand afresh it must be with the 


J. H. Oldham 225 

determination to present the Christian faith and life in its 
fullness and not merely an intellectual account of it. 

Where the reality of community has been lost, the task 
of recovering it must begin in small groups. In an arrest¬ 
ing passage the writer of the anonymous paper in this vol¬ 
ume points out that for multitudes of people today the 
world has become a frightening place, because love has de¬ 
parted from it. The question of paramount importance, 
therefore, for the future of civilization is whether the 
church today possesses the inner vitality to create small 
communities possessing a genuine social life, bound to¬ 
gether in mutual support and service, and dedicated to 
promoting the good of the community as a whole. Such 
groups would be the living germs of a new social conscious¬ 
ness and the creators of a true community life. 4 

What is fundamentally at stake in the modern world is 
our understanding of the nature and destiny of man. 
Underlying the policies of church, community and state in 
education is the conception which each entertains at any 
given time of the meaning of man’s life. This is the ulti¬ 
mate, though by no means always the actual, issue in the 
historical conflicts which arise. In some instances the con¬ 
troversy may be no more than a struggle between institu¬ 
tions for the control of schools. But in proportion as those 
concerned with education reflect deeply on their aims, 
the question. What is man? cannot be evaded. There is 
no question on the answer to which the future of mankind 
more depends than on the question whether we believe 
that man is merely the plaything of blind natural forces, 
or that he is himself the source of all values in the world, 
or, on the other hand, that he has been created to become a 
free son of God. 

4 From a different point of view the same idea finds powerful literary 
expression in Mr. Middleton Murray’s The Necessity of Pacifism. 


226 Church, Community, State and Education 

This fundamental issue whether man is made for time 
or for eternity is the theme of Mr. Smith’s paper. The 
point which he seeks to drive home is that Christian faith 
clings to the one view while the society of which the school 
is a part and the life for which it prepares its pupils are 
based on quite other assumptions. Here lies an irrecon¬ 
cilable conflict, the effects of which may be all the more 
disastrous because the conflict is latent and not explicit and 
open. The situation is clearer in the mission field where 
the distinctive Christian view of life is in marked contrast 
with the surrounding environment. Similarly, the power¬ 
ful anti-Christian movements of our time are making plain 
the radical nature of the issues. Those who live in coun¬ 
tries where Christianity is tolerated and a liberal tradition 
persists have need to open their eyes to what is happening 
in the world as a whole. The events of our time are making 
manifest that what is at stake is the relation of the Chris¬ 
tian understanding of life to the prevailing attitudes and 
practices of a secular and largely pagan society. 

The unavoidable conflict between these sharply opposed 
views of man in modern society, and consequently in pub¬ 
lic systems of education, compels us to consider the rela¬ 
tion of Christian faith to the general task of education. 
There are those who would say, categorically, that the two 
are totally unrelated. They would maintain that the 
church has nothing to do with education in the usual 
meaning of the term. This point of view directs attention 
to a profound truth. The act of faith is something sui 
generis. To hear and respond to God’s unconditional 
demand is to be brought into a new dimension — to use a 
term the far-reaching significance of which has been im¬ 
pressively brought out by Professor Karl Heim. 5 The 
awakening of faith is God’s act alone. It is not something 
that human effort or skill can ever bring about. 

e The Transcendent God (Nisbet). 


J. H. Oldham 227 

But this vital truth does not imply that the church can 
be indifferent to the influences which are brought to bear 
on the growing child. It is a matter of common experience 
that the physical and the spiritual are intimately related. 
Certain bodily states are inimical to moral and spiritual 
growth. Cretinism is an extreme example. If this is true, 
there is no reason why it should not be equally true that 
faults in training, and more particularly in the training of 
the emotions, may have the effect of closing the mind to 
the religious appeal or of bringing it about that if that 
appeal should be heard the response finds expression in 
base and perverted forms. Emotional biases may be cre¬ 
ated which dull the conscience completely to the voice 
of God or lead to grave misinterpretations of its meaning. 
Because of the indissoluble unity of the human person the 
church must both hold unwaveringly to the truth that the 
gospel is something that is beyond human control and, 
hence, outside educational processes, and at the same time 
be profoundly and actively interested in those processes, 
lest they interpose insuperable hindrances to the under¬ 
standing and receiving of the gospel. 

In the task of Christian education, which is the specific 
responsibility of the church, our concern cannot be with 
anything less than the whole man. To take in hand this 
task, as it ought to be taken in hand, in the full light of 
modern knowledge will necessitate far-reaching changes in 
the forms of Christian ministry. The supreme task of the 
church must always be to proclaim the divine Word. But 
we miss the heart of the matter when, yielding to the 
subtle pressure of the methods of preaching and instruc¬ 
tion on which we chiefly rely, we intellectualize the gospel. 
The gospel entrusted to us is a message of salvation. We 
are always in danger of accepting as substitutes for salva¬ 
tion two things, more easily attained, which are not sal¬ 
vation. The one is doctrinal belief, and the other is the 


228 Church, Community, State and Education 

habit of attendance at religious services. If a person pro¬ 
fesses the right doctrine and is diligent in attendance at 
church we take this as evidence that he is a Christian. But 
a man may do both these things and yet remain hard, 
grasping, uncharitable, censorious, a detractor of others, 
and entirely self-centered. Salvation means emancipation 
from fear, deliverance from egotism and egocentricity, and 
the joyous service of God and of men in the freedom of 
sonship. 

Such freedom, as we have seen, can only be found in a 
living relation to a loving personal God. But just as 
Christ devoted his ministry to the healing of men’s bodies 
as well as their souls, so the church must not only proclaim 
the Word which makes men free, but also in the fullness 
of its love for men direct its ministries to removing these 
infirmities of body, mind, and spirit which are barriers to 
the reception of that Word. The Christian education 
of the young is not merely, or even primarily, a matter of 
instruction, but the communication of a vital experience 
of personal relationship and community. It must, no less 
than general education, take account of the different 
phases in the growth of the individual, of the variety of 
types of individual and of the ways in which the growing 
person is at different ages affected by his environment. 
The effective fulfilment of the Christian ministry requires 
not only a growing appreciation on the part of Christian 
preachers and teachers of the scientific understanding of 
man, but practical cooperation, where it can be brought 
about, between ministers of the gospel and doctors, psy¬ 
chiatrists, social welfare workers and schoolteachers. 

We are thus brought to consider, finally, the relation of 
the church to public education. This is often treated as 
though it were the central issue. It is evident, however, 
that in many countries Christian teaching, and even all 


J. H. Oldham 229 

Christian influence, are deliberately excluded from the 
schools. In countries in which Christian schools, or Chris¬ 
tian teaching in schools maintained by the public author¬ 
ity, are still permitted, the fullest advantage should be 
taken of the opportunity so long as it lasts. The inclusion 
of Christian teaching in the system of public education 
has the great advantage — among others — of disseminat¬ 
ing among the general population a knowledge of the facts, 
history, and doctrines of Christianity. This is a gain, even 
when the knowledge is in the main merely intellectual. 

It is important, however, to take a realistic view, and 
not to exaggerate the importance either of church schools 
or of Christian instruction in public schools. The differ¬ 
ence between church schools and state schools is often less 
than we suppose. We allow ourselves to be misled by the 
fact that in the curriculum of the former a place is pro¬ 
vided for Christian instruction. If it is true, however, as 
was asserted at the beginning of this paper, that the real 
educative influence is that of the prevailing culture trans¬ 
mitted through the school, this force will operate in both 
church schools and state schools, and the power of a reli¬ 
gious lesson to counteract its influence may easily be exag¬ 
gerated. Moreover, we shall do well to ponder the arrest¬ 
ing statement in the paper by Mr. Morris that church 
schools in England do not, at the present time, represent or 
express the really vital differences in modern society. In 
the profound struggle regarding ultimate beliefs, which is 
taking place in the world today, Christianity can have no 
important future unless it stands for something distinctive, 
challenging and supremely significant. 

Where it is possible to establish and conduct a Christian 
school which attempts to give expression to a genuine 
Christian understanding of life in all its aspects, in contrast 
with the assumptions and practices of a secular or pagan 


230 Church, Community, State and Education 

society, it is essential that the staff should be convinced 
Christians, wholeheartedly committed to the Christian 
way of life. The fundamental problem is that of the teach¬ 
ers. The best examples of efforts of this kind are perhaps 
found in the mission field. In the best of the Christian 
educational institutions in non-Christian countries there 
is a staff of enthusiastic Christian teachers striving in com¬ 
mon to make of the school a Christian society, the life of 
which offers a marked contrast to that of society in general. 
But where the sharp distinction between the Christian 
and the secular life has become blurred, there may be little 
difference between church schools and state schools in the 
extent to which they reflect the prevailing ideas and habits 
of society, and the religious teaching in the former may be 
little more than the presentation of an intellectual set of 
beliefs which involve no fundamental change of life. 

Where the opportunity is given of establishing a Chris¬ 
tian school which aims at realizing in all its activities the 
ends of a Christian society, there is every reason for taking 
advantage of it. That variations from the prevailing type 
of schools are advantageous even in the national interest 
is an argument which may in favorable circumstances 
win the assent even of those who are not themselves Chris¬ 
tians. Variety of educational experiment provides an op¬ 
portunity for conceptions and ways of life which are 
temporarily undervalued, but which may, nonetheless, con¬ 
tain the seeds of promise for the future, to make their con¬ 
tribution to the national life. It is not to be expected, 
however, that those who are committed to the endeavor 
to create national unity through the schools will readily 
accept this view, and opportunities for wholehearted ex¬ 
periments in Christian education are in the present state 
of the world likely to be rare. 

We have witnessed in recent years widespread attempts 


J. H. Oldham 231 

in certain countries to use the schools as a means of im¬ 
posing a particular doctrine and philosophy of life on the 
entire population. In view of these dangers there is strong 
reason to insist that the proper task of the school is to 
render to society a technical and specialized service. Its 
primary business is to impart the knowledge, insight, and 
skill that are demanded by social necessity, that must be 
acquired in youth, and that call for skilled guidance and 
instruction in their acquisition. The facts mentioned in 
Professor Zenkowsky’s paper are of extreme interest in this 
connection. The schools in Russia, he tells us, have now 
been freed from their political objectives. The task of 
forming a new type of human being and of cultivating 
enthusiasm for the communist view of life has been trans¬ 
ferred from the schools to the youth organizations. The 
former are permitted to limit themselves to their more 
strictly educational objectives. Similarly in Italy the effort 
to capture the soul of youth is actively pursued in youth 
organizations rather than in the schools. Mr. Morris, 
again, evidently looks more to adult education than to the 
schools as the field in which the free association committed 
to the realization of specific purposes, which he desider¬ 
ates, may most successfully be developed. 

The view that the school, like other specialized activities 
in the community, has its own distinctive technical func¬ 
tion to perform, implies a more modest estimate of the 
services which schools can render to the nation than the 
expectations which sometimes find expression in enthusi¬ 
astic gatherings of teachers. Christian teachers in particu¬ 
lar, in proportion to the fervor of their conviction, may be 
reluctant to accept a view which would appear to limit 
the opportunities and possibilities of the school. The 
question may be asked, however, whether it is not neces¬ 
sary and important to distinguish more clearly than we are 


232 Church, Community, State and Education 

accustomed to do between the responsibilites of the Chris¬ 
tian teacher as a person and his responsibilities as a teacher. 

The teacher, like the doctor, the lawyer, the farmer and 
the engineer, has his own distinctive vocation and his 
specialized contribution to make to the life of the com¬ 
munity. He is not in his professional capacity concerned 
with reforming the world. Propaganda lies outside his 
sphere. His first duty as a Christian teacher is to dis¬ 
charge with faithfulness and thoroughness the particular 
task assigned to him. 

On the other hand it belongs to the nature of his calling 
that, in contrast with the farmer, whose main concern is 
with the soil and what it grows, or the engineer, who works 
with material things, he is engaged all the time with per¬ 
sons. He is concerned, moreover, with persons at the 
formative period in their growth. In a boarding school in 
particular he fills in some measure the place of the absent 
parents. As a Christian, he must recognize his responsi¬ 
bility to all other persons with whom he is brought into 
contact. In his relations with his pupils he thus has in¬ 
escapable responsibilities as a person in addition to those 
which he has as teacher. 

The Christian teacher cannot, of course, divide himself 
into two separate halves. The unity of his personality 
must express itself in all his acts. He cannot discard his 
ultimate beliefs or refuse to allow them to determine all 
his judgments and attitudes. It is his duty as a Christian to 
bear fearless witness to his faith by his acts and, where 
occasion requires, also by his words. It is possible, how¬ 
ever, to distinguish these Christian responsibilities from 
the carrying out of his professional task in accordance with 
its own specific, technical requirements. The extent to 
which these two sets of responsibilities may in practice 
coincide depends on circumstances. In a school which is 


J. H. Oldham 233 

known to be a Christian school, and to which pupils are 
sent on that understanding, it is possible for all the activi¬ 
ties of the school to be unified in a single dominating pur¬ 
pose. At the other extreme a Christian may be a teacher 
in a school in which any explicit teaching or overt Chris¬ 
tian influence would be resented by the authorities or by 
the parents of the pupils, and the teacher has in conse¬ 
quence to restrict himself in the school to the fulfilment 
of his professional duties. The resulting tension between 
his responsibilities as a Christian and as a teacher is simi¬ 
lar to that involved in every attempt to live as a Christian 
in an un-Christian or incompletely Christian society. 

This paper, like the others in the volume, has had to be 
confined to a consideration of principles. A discussion of 
their application is impossible, since the conditions in dif¬ 
ferent countries are widely different, and since the field of 
education includes an immense variety of tasks and re¬ 
sponsibilities— e.g., those of parents, of the clergy, of 
teachers in various grades of schools, and of those con¬ 
cerned with the control and administration of education. 
To discuss in the concrete these quite distinct responsi¬ 
bilities is outside the scope of the present paper. More¬ 
over, the church is confronted today with a fundamen¬ 
tally new situation in which the experience of the past no 
longer affords sufficient guidance. This volume will have 
achieved its purpose if it succeeds in bringing that fact 
home and planting it deeply in the minds of its readers. 

The problems to which attention has been directed call 
for much further study and constructive thought by those 
who have the equipment and leisure to undertake it. As 
Mr. Smith has pointed out, there is an urgent need for 
the working out on fresh lines of a Christian theology and 
Christian ethic related to the needs and tasks of the present 
day. It is no less important that individuals and groups 


234 Church, Community, State and Education 

should set to work where they are, and ask themselves 
what their Christian faith demands in the circumstances in 
which they have to live and act. What is wanted more 
than anything else is a rapidly increasing number of 
“ cells,” or small groups of people who are feeling their 
way to the discovery of the Christian witness and action that 
are called for in the present state of society. It is to a multi¬ 
tude of such experiments, prompted and guided by the 
Holy Spirit, and undertaken in the spirit of Christian ad¬ 
venture and in a deep and growing awareness of the reali¬ 
ties of the present crisis, that we must look for a vitalizing 
and renewal of the life of the church. 
















































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